Gaulish Apollo called Virotutes or Virotûs. The inscription is imperfect, and now reads only:[1] Apollini Virotuti T. Rutil(ius) Buricus. We have no further information about this god, and it is unfortunate that the interpretation of his Gaulish name or epithet is a matter of mere conjecture. It seems, however, pretty evident that it is a compound of which the first part viro may be the Gaulish equivalent of the Latin verus, Welsh gwir, Irish fir, 'true,' or else of Latin vir, Welsh gwr, O. Irish fer, 'a man.' The preference, if given to the latter, would suggest that the epithet may have meant man-healing or man-protecting, and thus one might be led to expect in the second element of the name of the god a Gaulish word related in point of origin and meaning to the Latin tutor, 'protector or defender;' but the vocabulary of modern Celts fails to render us any aid in this matter: all that can be said is, that there is no evidence that such a word as we want did not exist in Gaulish.
Beyond the boundaries of the Allobroges, the Gaulish Apollo appears to have been known all over the Celtic world, and he bore several names, of which the most important were Maponos, Grannos and Toutiorix. Three inscriptions[2] in honour of Apollo Maponos have been discovered in the north of England, and in one of them, found near Ainstable, in Cumberland, he is called Deus Maponus, without any allusion to Apollo. Fortunately the name Maponos offers no difficulty: it is the same word as the old Welsh mapon, now mabon, 'boy or male child,' which occurs, for example, in a Welsh poem in the Book of Taliessin, a manuscript of the 13th century:
