Dumézil argues dashingly that the well, as it was so injurious to eye-
sight, must have contained something fiery, analogous to Apa ̄m napa ̄t. With
its inundation he compares on the one hand the Roman legend of the
miraculous overflow of the Lacus Albanus early in the fourth century ,^139
and on the other the Avestan myth of Fraŋrasyan, cited earlier, in which the
Turanian dived three times into Vourukasˇa in quest of the sovereign glory
that Apa ̨m napa ̄t guarded there: each time it eluded him, and the lake
developed a new ‘outflow’.
As for the names Neptunus and Nechtan, Dumézil suggests that nept-, an
Ablaut form of the ‘grandson’ word, was furnished in proto-Celtic with the
individualizing suffix-ono- which appears in certain other divine names,
including a couple formed from names of family relationships.^140 Neptonos
would have developed regularly into Irish Nechtan. For Neptune Dumézil has
to assume some more Italic suffix such as *-ı ̄no-, and then deformation on the
analogy of Portu ̄ nus.
This is all ingenious and beguiling. Puhvel and others have taken it over
wholesale. But even allowing that the Grandson of the Waters could be
abbreviated to the Grandson, it is hard to see why this title should devolve
upon a Roman god who does not represent a fiery element nurtured by the
waters but the waters themselves; and the argument that there was something
fiery about Nechtan is a dubious inference from the circumstance that his
well was damaging to eyes. We shall see below that the same was true of a
stream in another country, where there is no suggestion that fire or brightness
was involved. Satisfactory alternative etymologies exist both for Neptunus (as
above) and for Nechtan.^141
There were of course other Celtic water deities. Many local cults are
attested by inscriptions in Roman Gaul, where their names are often rendered
as Neptunus, confirming that he represented water of all kinds and is not to
be relegated to the sea.^142 The Life of St Patrick records that in Ireland a rex
aquarum was worshipped ‘ad fontem Findmaige qui dicitur Slan’.^143
It is not surprising if the Rhine was considered a god, though the evidence
is scanty. Propertius (4. 10. 41) refers to a Belgic chieftain who boasted that he
was descended from it, just as Asteropaios claims to be a son of the Axios in
(^139) The sources do not connect this with anything fiery, or with Neptune. However, Dionysius
of Halicarnassus (Ant. 12. 10. 1) says that the prodigy occurred ‘about the rising of the Dog star’
(as against Plutarch, Camillus 3. 2, who puts it in the autumn), and Dumézil connects this with
the date of the Neptunalia, 23 July.
(^140) Ma ̄trona ̄ ‘the Mother (par excellence)’,= the river Marne; Maponos ‘the Son’; Dumézil
(1968–73), iii. 38.
(^141) Either nigw-to-‘washed, pure, bright’, or nebh-tu-: W. Meid ap. Olmsted (1994), 399.
(^142) Vendryès (1948), 279 f.; Duval (1957), 59; de Vries (1961), 85, 114–16.
(^143) Vita Patricii i. 122 (ii. 323 Stokes).
- Storm and Stream 277