Page:Origin and Growth of Religion (Rhys).djvu/43

Rh Having said so much of the Gaulish Apollo, it would hardly be fair to pass in silence over the female divinity associated with him. Her name was Sirona, sometimes lisped into Đirona, and a monument now in the museum at Munich gives a bas-relief representation of her and Apollo Grannos. The latter holds a very large lyre in his left hand, and what may have been a plectrum in the other, while on another face of the stone stands Sirona in a long dress: she has the general appearance of one of the class of Gaulish divinities called Mothers or Matrons: in her left hand she has a bunch of fruit, and in her right some ears of corn, which she is holding up. What relation she bore to the god we are nowhere told; but there is nothing to suggest that she was his wife, even if his names Maponus and Mogounus did not tend to render such a supposition inadmissible, which I think they do. She was probably regarded as his mother, and she was certainly capable of being treated independently; for there are monuments in honour of her alone. One of these last is surmounted with her bust in bas-relief, and the face seems to bear the appearance of extreme old age. The sculptor can hardly have considered her the wife of Apollo Maponus, nor need he have represented her so aged even as his mother. He had probably a reason for doing so, and this brings me back to her name. It will be seen that, if we discard the ending common to it with such Gaulish names as Epona, Divona, Matrona and the like, we have remaining only the syllable sir, which one cannot help interpreting in the light of the Irish sír, Welsh hir, both of which mean long; it would thus seem