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398 one of the treasures of the Tuatha Dé Danann; nor is it necessary to point out the parallelism between his slaying of Balor and Llew's transfixing his rival by a cast of his spear, which an intervening rock was not enough to stop in its fatal course.

Before proceeding further, it will be well to say something about the names Llew and Lug. The former is in point of sound the same word as the Welsh for lion; but on looking closely into the passages where the name of the Sun-god occurs, it proves to have been originally not Llew but Lleu; but as mediæval spelling did not always carefully distinguish the sounds of u, w and v, it is only the assonances and rhymes that can be thoroughly decisive in this matter. A couple of such instances occur in a poem in the Book of Taliessin; on the other hand, the Mabinogi of Mâth has always Llew, except in one remarkable place. It will be remembered that when Gwydion suspected that he had found Llew in the form of a wounded and wretched eagle on the top of an oak-tree, he sang three verses of poetry to him, at each of which the eagle descended a little, so that at last he let himself down on Gwydion's lap, to be changed by the