Page:Origin and Growth of Religion (Rhys).djvu/58

42 which the Romans would have regarded as more properly belonging to Mars.

Such a god as I have alluded to must have once been the greatest of all the Celtic gods, the chief of the Celtic pantheon, a conjecture which is favoured by the natural interpretation of some of the attested epithets of the Celtic Mars. Take, for instance, the dative Rigisamo, which occurs in an inscription found in this country, in the county of Somerset. The word seems to be a superlative, meaning most royal or kingly. A still more remarkable epithet was Albiorix, applied to him in an inscription in a museum at Avignon. The compound should mean king or ruler of Albio, a word which may be identified with the Welsh word 'elfyᵭ,' used by Welsh poets in the sense of the world or the universe: so we may suppose that Albiorix signified king of the world. Lastly, the war-god's associate is called Nemetona on the monuments, as, for instance, on one at Bath. She has been identified by M. Gaidoz with Nemon, the wife, according to Irish tradition, of Nét, the war-god of the ancient Irish. Another tradition, however, gives to the latter as his wife the