ing of the city. (2) Some notes to the Bordeaux Itinerary[1] make Lugdunum mean Mons Desideratus, which was also probably a guess, like the other. (3) A ninth-century Life of St. Germanus by Hericus devotes to the name the following lines:[2]
'Lucduno celebrant Gallorum famine nomen,
Impositum quondam, quod sit mons lucidus idem.'
The motive for the spelling Lucduno is doubtless to be sought in mons lucidus; but it is possible that the latter represents, somewhat inaccurately doubtless, a tradition which had come down from a time when Gaulish had not become a dead language: at any rate it seems to approach the truth more nearly than the other etymologies, and it may be inferred that what underlay the passage in the pseudo-Plutarch was this: the Gauls regarded the raven as the bird of the Lugoves or of one of them; there was a tradition that ravens appeared while Lugdunum was being founded, and that therefore it was dedicated to Lugus, whence its name of Lugu-dûnon. This is of course a mere theory; but so far as regards the ravens, it does not stand alone; for Owein son of Urien, who must be regarded as a solar hero, had a mysterious army of ravens;[3] Cúchulainn, an avatar of Lug, had his two ravens of magic or druidism,[4] and from hearing them his
- ↑ Otherwise called Itinerarium Hierosolymitanum, and cited by Diefenbach in his Origines Europææ, p. 325.
- ↑ Diefenbach, loc. cit.; but the Bollandists read Lugduno.
- ↑ R. B. Mab. pp. 153-9, 192; Guest, ij. 407-15, i. 84.
- ↑ Windisch's Irische Texte, p. 220; Bk. of the Dun, 48b; see also 57a, where the words fiaich lúgbairt are used, meaning, as it would seem, 'ravens that bring Lug or light:' compare the Welsh lleu-fer, 'light -bearing or light-giving, a luminary.'
