Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 17, 1906.djvu/57

 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.