of the incumbent air or of the surrounding sea, or else as the god of light, from whom the country derived its name of the Island or Plain of Fál. As compared with Llûᵭ, distinguished at most as a king and hero on land and a warrior at sea, Nuada was split into no less then three personages, one of whom was Nuada of the Silver Hand, the martial king, and another Nuada Finnfáil, god of light and of the heavens, while we have a third in Nuada Necht, whose connection with the world of waters has already been hinted at. Thus it appears that the mythology of the Celts was assuming a departmental form as far as regarded their chief divinity, out of whose wide character they specialized a warlike Posidon or Neptune, with a tendency to make that element predominate. This specializing presumably began before the Celts divided themselves into Gallo-Brythons and Goidels or settled in the British Isles; for it is not improbable that some of them accustomed themselves to a seafaring life long before the time when they began to cross in sufficient numbers to conquer these islands from their ancient inhabitants, and very long before the Parisii sent a colony down the Seine to seek a home on the other side of the Humber. But Nodens, the Celtic Zeus, was not simply a Neptune or a Posidon, in his connection with the sea: he was also a Mars, as the inscriptions at Lydney testify. That the Celts of Britain should have been inclined to transform their Zeus into a marine Mars at so early a date is a remarkable fact: it lends fresh significance to the words of Pomponius Mela[1] when he speaks of the two giants eponymous of Britain and Ireland, who fought with the
- ↑ Parthey's ed. pp. 50-1.
