Among other places, the god has left his name to Bourbon-l'Archambault, in the department of the Allier, whence the Bourbons derive theirs. The exact relation between the kindred forms Borvo and Bormo, together with Bormanus and Bormana, is not very clear; but it is Borvo, and not Bormo, that is re-echoed by the French Bourbon, Bourbonne; and it is Borvo that has its reflex in the vocabulary of the Celts of modern times: I allude to the Welsh berw, 'a boiling,' berwi, 'to boil;' Irish berbaim, 'I boil, cook, smelt,' which are of the same origin as the Latin fervĕre and fervēre, 'to boil or to be boiling hot.' It does not appear why the Gaulish word was Borvo rather than Bervo, but there can be no serious doubt as to the close kinship of the words mentioned, or the fact that the god received his name in allusion to the hot springs over the bubbling volume of which he was supposed to preside. Whether he was originally identical with the Gaulish Apollo it is impossible to say, but even in case he was, he comes before us in most of the inscriptions considerably disengaged from the Gaulish Apollo, as may be gathered from his having a distinct associate Bormana or Damona. But, on the other hand, a passage in one of the Panegyrics of Eumenius is supposed to refer to the hot springs of Bourbon-Lancy: the author would seem to treat Apollo as the chief divinity of the place, and he describes him as punishing perjury by means of the boiling streams,[1] though the monuments found referring there to Borvo or Bormo make no allusion to Apollo's own name.
- ↑ Eumenii Panegyricus Constantino Dietus, xxi, xxij (in Migne's Patrologia, viij; sec col. 637-8); Greppo, pp. 51, 52; Rev. Celt. iv. 144.
