Page:Origin and Growth of Religion (Rhys).djvu/78

62 fiur, 'sister;' Welsh 'chwior-, chwioryᵭ:,' 'sisters;' Sanskrit svasār-as, the same; or Welsh tei, now tai, 'houses,' for tegi ( = teges-a) of the same formation as the Greek or, 'a roof, a house,' plural. According to this conjecture, the Gaulish god's name may have been pronounced Ezus. The word is not known to survive in the modern languages of the Celts as an independent name, but Welsh has a remarkable derivative from it. For just as Sanskrit asu-s yields asura-s, 'living, spiritual, said especially of the gods, of Varuṇa, and of the sky; any spirit or non-material being of an evil nature,' and the Zend aṅhu or ahu yields ahura-s, 'lord or ruler,' as in Ahurô Mazdâo, Old Persian Auramazdâ, the Ormuzd of Milton's great epic, so the Gaulish Esu-s may be regarded as having given rise to a derivative esuro-s, which may be detected in the Welsh iôr, a word meaning lord or ruler, but seldom applied to any one but God. The term has been reduced to a monosyllable pronounced jôr, with a semi-vowel initial indicating, if this equation be well founded, that the first of the three syllables which originally made up the word was not accented by the ancient Celts. A similar remark applies to another title of God in Welsh, namely, Iôn, which is of the same origin and meaning as Iôr, and reminds one of the Old Norse ásynja, 'a goddess.'

We may, then, guess the Gaulish divinity's name to have meant lord, ruler or god; but why should the hammerer have been called lord or god ? For the present let it suffice that I cite the analogy of Thor, as he likewise was treated as the lord or Anse par excellence.