Lugus
Only one, early inscription from Peñalba de Villastar, Spain is widely agreed to attest to Lugus as a singular entity.
The god Lugus has also been cited in the etymologies of several Celtic personal and place-names incorporating the element "Lug(u)-" (for example, the Roman settlement Lugdunum).
In Welsh mythology, Lleu Llaw Gyffes, a protagonist of the Fourth Branch of the Mabinogi, is a more minor figure, but is linked etymologically with Irish Lugh.
The reconstruction of a pan-Celtic god Lugus from these details, first proposed in the 19th century by Henri d'Arbois de Jubainville, has proven controversial.
[5]: 918 Heinrich Wagner [de] and Erich Hamp have proposed that the name derives from a proto-Celtic word meaning "oath" (either *lugiom or *leugh-).
[8][9]: 66 Other etymologies derive "Lugus" from the name of the Norse god Loki,[3]: 211 proto-Celtic *luc- ("mouse" or "rat"),[10] and Gaulish lougos ("raven").
[4]: 354 [12]: 214 The singular is inscribed on a ceramic sherd from Oppidum de l'Ermitage [fr], but this is probably a theophoric name and not a reference to the god Lugus.
[12]: 215 Henri Gaidoz contended that plural deities were minor in the Celtic pantheon, and that therefore Lugus could not have been the chief god of the Celts.
Arbois de Jubainville and Joseph Vendryes argued that the Celts invoked even major gods (such as Mars) in the plural.
[25]: 219 [19]: 132 Celtic personal names with this element include Lug, Lugaunus, Lugugenicus, Lugotorix, Luguadicos, Luguselva, and Lougous.
[25]: 221 Lucus Augusti (modern-day Lugo) is the site of a Roman sanctuary with dedications to the Lugoves;[12]: 216 its name may be derived from the deity-name Lugus, though it could simply be Latin for "grove of Augustus".
[i] Attempts have been made to analyse it as *lugus ("luminous" or "clear") + dunum ("hill"), bolstered by a medieval etymology which gives the gloss mons lucidus ("shining mountain").
They have many images of him, and they regard him as the inventor of all arts, the god who directs men on their journeys, and the most powerful helper in trading and getting money.
[24]: 132 Another difference is suggested by the order in which the gods are presented: Mercury is given primacy, whereas the Romans considered Jupiter the most important deity.
[m] This identification was widely accepted until the late 19th century, when Arbois de Jubainville proposed that Lugus lay behind Caesar's description.
Arbois de Jubainville pointed to the prominence of "Lug(u)-" elements in Gaulish place-names, and a possible festival of Lugus at Lugdunum/Lyon (discussed below).
[24]: 127 Maier has criticised this identification on the basis that "inventor of all arts", though not a Greco-Roman belief about the god Mercury, is a common literary topos in Roman descriptions of foreign religions.
[10]: 45 Arguing from an association between Irish Lugh and pigs, Gwenaël Le Duc [fr] has proposed that the Euffigneix statue (of a Gaulish boar-god) is a representation of Lugus.
He is portrayed as a leading member of the Tuatha Dé Danann, a supernatural race in medieval Irish literature often thought to represent euhemerized pre-Christian deities.
Alongside Fionn mac Cumhaill and Cú Chulainn (Lugh's supernatural son), he is one of the three great heroes of the Irish mythological tradition.
Firstly, he drew attention to the (above discussed) correspondence between Lugh's epithet Samildánach ("master of all arts") and Caesar's description of Gaulish Mercury.
[24]: 127 Secondly, he pointed out that an annual concillium of the Gauls in Lugdunum/Lyon, instituted in 12 BCE in honour of the emperor Augustus, fell on exactly the same day as Lughnasa.
Rhys drew a comparison between an episode in the Mabinogi, wherein Lleu and his foster father Gwydion produce gold-ornamented shoes, and the inscription from Uxama Argaela, where the Lugoves are invoked by a group of shoemakers.
[44]: 102 The god Lugus was first reconstructed by Arbois de Jubainville in his monumental Le cycle mythologique irlandais et la mythologie celtique (1884).
Arbois de Jubainville linked together Irish Lugh, Caesar's Gaulish Mercury, the toponym Lugdunum, and the epigraphic evidence of the Lugoves.
[13]: 70–71 Initial criticism of this theory (for example, from Henri Gaidoz) gave way to what Ovist has described as "uncritical affirmation" of the existence of a pan-Celtic god Lugus.
[13]: 71 The long inscription from Peñalba de Villastar was first published in 1942 and, by the 1950s, it had been identified as a unique dedication to Lugus in the singular.
[13]: 72 As well as criticising the identification of Caesar's Gaulish Mercury with Irish Lugh, Maier cast doubt on the value of the previously adduced epigraphic and toponymic data from Continental Europe.
[13]: 73 Recent monographs on the god by Krista Ovist (2004) and Gaël Hily (2012) have reaffirmed and elaborated on Arbois de Jubainville's reconstruction.
