to belong to the same mythical category as that of Goleuᵭyᵭ, and to refer to the goddess as the mother of the blazing sun, or else, more probably, to her as a personification of the light that overspreads the sky before the sun appears above the horizon, or after he has just sunk below it. Originally, however, it may have alluded more particularly to the hot days of summer; for myths about the sun may have to do with the seasons of the year as well as with the landmarks within the narrower space of a day. It is unfortunate that classical scholars have nothing certain to say as to the meaning of the name of Apollo's mother Leto or Latona, in whom we undoubtedly have one of the Hellenic counterparts of the Celtic figures which we have been trying to examine.
In the foregoing stories the Sun-god is, as a rule, not brought up by his mother, and in the next to be mentioned the separation between mother and son is brought about in a remarkable way. The following is the purport of the tale:[1]—Pwyỻ Prince of Dyved had taken to wife
- ↑ R. B. Mab. pp. 17—25; Guest, iij. 59—71.
O. Norse dag-r, Gothic daga-s, German tag. Having got thus far, one at once recognizes the equivalent of Sanskrit dagdh- or of the Lith. degt- in the Welsh word goᵭaith, formerly godeith or gwoᵭeith (for an early Celtic wo-deχt-), 'a blaze, especially the burning of a place overrun with brakes, brushwood or furze.' Similarly Gloᵭaith, the name of a place near Llandudno, is probably to be analysed into Gloᵭaith and interpreted as the place for burning glo or charcoal: it is spelled Glodeyth in the Record of Carnarvon, p. 1. It may be conjectured that we have the element deith, deyth or daith in a noun edeithor, which occurs in the probable sense of 'burner, scorcher or blazer,' in the Bk. of Taliessin (Skene, ij. 203); and edeithor without the prefix would be deithor, of possibly much the same meaning, and involving a base corresponding to that from which Dechtere has been derived by adding the ja termination. Windisch, p. 138, gives once the shorter form Dectir.
