importance once attaching to Lammas among the Welsh, admits of another kind of proof, namely, the fact, for such it seems to be, that the Welsh term, in the modified form of Gula Augusti, passed into the Latinity of the Chronicles,[1] and even into a statute of Edward III.[2] The widely spread observance of the festival of Augustus would be satisfactorily accounted for on the supposition, that it was a great Celtic feast continued under a new name.
It must by no means be supposed that the worship of the Sun-god here in question rests on inferential evidence alone of the kind just indicated, for proof of a more direct nature is not altogether wanting. Witness the following Latin inscription from the ancient Spanish town of Uxama, a Celtic name now changed into Osma: Lugovibus sacrum, L. L. Urcico Collegio Sutorum d. d.[3] This seems to tell us that a man whose name was L. L. Urcico built a temple for the Lugoves and made a present of it to a college of cobblers, which at once raises several questions, such as, why Lugovibus and not Lugovi, and why a college of cobblers? why should they have had charge of the temple? It is a far cry from Spain to Snowdon, but I know of no means of answering these questions except those provided by the Mabinogi of Mâth,
- ↑ Annales Cambriæ (the Rolls edition, 1860), p. 109 (A.D. 1287).
- ↑ See Ducange, s. v. gula, where he refers to a statute of Edward III. a. 31, c. 14, and quotes therefrom: Aueragium aestiuale fieri debet inter Hokedai et gulam Augusti.
- ↑ The Berlin Corpus Inscr. Lat. Hispaniarum, ij. No. 2818. The writer in the Rev. Celt., vij. 399, already referred to, cites Pliny's Hist. Nat. iii. 4, 11, as proving Uxama to have been a Celtic city belonging to the Arevaci. As to the name Uxama, see my Celtic Britain2, p. 280.
