Page:Essays ethnological and linguistic.djvu/25

Rh occurred, especially when we may remove all difficulty respecting the word used, by understanding it somewhat of Cwswr or Cyswr, which in Cymric are terms of contempt. If those who held Cæsar prisoner understood one of their chiefs to say that he was a worthless captive, they might thus allow him to escape as undeserving of their trouble. This explanation seems to me more reasonable than to pronounce the anecdote apocryphal, and certainly the manner in which the circumstance is recited carries to the mind a full conviction of its truthfulness. "Hoc de historiâ tractatum est: namque Caius Julius Cæsar cum dimicaret in Galliâ et ab hoste raptus equo ejus portaretur armatus, occurrit quidam ex hostibus qui eum nosset et insultans ait Cæsar, Cæsar; quod Gallorum linguâ dimitte significat; et ita factum est ut dimitteretur. Hoc autem ipse Cæsar in Ephemeride suâ, dicit, ubi propriara coramemorat felicitatem," as he had good right to do.

Having already referred to the names of some rivers in mid-Gaul as deducible from the Cymric, it would be advi- seable also, if feasible, to point out some of the towns or other places to whose names we might assign a similar ori- gin. Knowing however the ridicule too often justly bestowed on etymologies, for which we have no clue or authority, and which are founded only on a fancied similarity or aptitude of meaning, I will confine myself to two instances, those of Novidunum and Lugdunum. These I take, not on account of their being more clearly explicable than several others, but because there were so many places called by each name as to indicate their origin from some particular local cause more than others. There were, in fact, three different places apparently of some importance bearing each of these names, and to one of them, Lugdunum, we have an expla- nation given us. Plutarch, or the author of the Treatise on Rivers, says, — From this we learn, that on the foundation of what is now the city of Lyons an augury was taken from a flight of crows, in accordance with which the city was called Lugdunum, for that loug or lougos in their language signified a crow, and doun or dunum, an eminence. Now it is the case that dun in Gaelic, and din in Cymric, may be