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Post by megli on Oct 12, 2010 12:55:27 GMT -1
do you want to clarify what you mean?
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Post by megli on Oct 13, 2010 2:09:07 GMT -1
Well, there are no deity names on inscriptions from Ireland as such, like you get in Gaul or Roman Britain. That said, Ptolemy's Geography preserves a couple of theonyms as placenames---Bouvinda for the r. Boyne, for example, the primitive Irish form which lies behind Old Irish Boand, 'White Cow'. Also as far as I recall the name LUGUDECCAS ('of Lugudex') appears on an ogam inscription, which is a man's name containing the theonym 'Lugus'.
There's no problem assuming SOME of the TDD genuinely represebt literary reflexes of pagan gods: Lug, Boand (as noted above) but also the Dagda, Oengus, Midir, the Badb Catha and Manannan all seem like good bets to me. In some cases the primitive irish name (the pre-600 AD form) is easily reconstructible: *oinogustus 'singular vigour' for Oengus, the *Dagodeiwos 'goodgod', for the Dagda, etc.
In some cases matters are tricky because heroes etc MAY be former gods---Fionn and Fergus (*Vindos and *Virogustos) look suspiciously ex-divine, judging by their names: 'White One' and 'Man-Vigour', and by the mythic resonance of their actions.
Sometimes later placenames point to lost gods: the name of a medieval Munster people called the Corcu Loigde indicates that their ancestors had worshipped a *Loigodeva, 'Calf-goddess', which is the word that stands behind Loigde. But no such lady appears in the literature, and it is rare for us to be able to recover a 'lost' deity name like this.
A final piece comes from St Patrick's 'Confessio', written in the second half of the 5th century by someone who, obviously, had seen pagan Ireland first hand. He makes very few references to it, but does refer to the Irish believing that a certain 'rex aquarum', 'King of the Waters' lived in a well.
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