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Lud
From History of the Kings of Britain by Geoffrey of Monmouth. Chapter XX
Heli's three sons; the first of whom, viz. Lud, gives name to the city of London.
Next to him succeeded his son Heli, who reigned forty years. He had three sons, Lud, Cassibellaun,[1] and Nennius; of whom Lud, being the eldest, succeeded to th kingdom after his father's death. He became famous for the building of cities, and for rebuilding the walls of Trinovantum, which he also surrounded with innumerable towers. He likewise commanded the citizens to build houses, and all other kinds of structures in it, so that no city in all foreign countries to a great distance round could show more beautiful palaces. He was withal a warlike man, and very magnificent in his feasts and public entertainments. And though he had many other cities, yet he loved this above them all, and resided in it the greater part of the year; for which reason it was afterwards called Kaerlud, and by the corruption of the word, Kaer-london; and again by change of languages, in process of time, London; as also by foreigners who arrived here, and reduced this country under their subjection, it was called Londres. At last, when he was dead, his body was buried by the gate which to this time is called in the British tongue after his name, Parthlud,[2] and in the Saxon, Ludesgata. He had two sons, Androgeus and Tenuantius, who were incapable of governing on account of their age: and therefore their uncle Cassibeallaun was preferred to the kingdom in their room. As soon as he was crowned, he began to display his generosity and magnificence to such a degree, that his fame reached to distant kingdoms; which was the reason that the monarchy of the whole kingdom came to be invested in him, and not in his nephews. Nothwithstanding Cassibellaun, from an impulse of piety, would not suffer them to be without their share in the kingdom, but assigned a large part of it to them. For he bestowed the city of Trinovantum, with the dukedom of Kent, on Androgeus; and the dukedom of Cornwall on Tenuantius. But he himself, as possessing the crown, had the sovereignty over them, and all the other princes of the island.
1 The British name of this prince is probably Caswallon.
2 In Latin Porta-Lud.
From Celtic Myth and Legend Poetry and Romance by Charles Squire
They still lived on in legend as kings of ancient Britain reigning in a fabulous past anterior to Julius Caesar--such were King Lud, founder of London; King Lear, whose legend was immortalized by Shakespeare; King Brennius, who filling parts in old drama. They still lived on as long-dead saints of the early churches of Ireland and Britain, whose wonderful attributes and adventures are, in many cases, only those of their original namesakes, the old gods, told afresh. And they still lived on in another, and a yet more potent, way. Myths of Arthur and his cycle of gods passed into the hands of the Norman story-tellers, to reappear as romances of King Arthur and his Knights of the Table Round. Thus spread over civilized Europe, their influence was immense. Their primal poetic impulse is still resonant in our literature; we need only instance Tennyson and Swinburne as minds that have come under its sway.
To trace Welsh and Irish kings and saints and hermits back to "the elemental powers of earth and fire, and the spirits that haunted the woods and streams" of Celtic imagination, and to disclose primitive pagan deities under the mediæval and Christian trappings of "King Arthur's Knights" will necessarily fall within the scope of this volume. But meanwhile the reader will probably be asking what evidence there is that apocryphal British kings like Lear and Lud, and questionable Irish saints like Bridget are really disguised Celtic divinities, or that the Morte D'Arthur, with its love of Launcelot and the queen, and its quest of the Holy Grail, was ever anything more than an invention of the Norman romance-writers. He will demand to know what facts we really possess about this supposed Celtic mythology alleged to have furnished their prototypes, and of what real antiquity and value are our authorities upon it.
From Celtic Myth and Legend Poetry and Romance by Charles Squire
But it is characteristic of Geoffrey of Monmouth's loose hold upon his materials that, not content with having connected several of these gods with Arthur's period, he further endows them with reigns of their own. "Urien" was Arthur's vassal, but "Urianus" was himself King of Britain centuries before Arthur was born.1 Lud (that is, Lludd) succeeded his father Beli.2 We hear nothing of his silver hand, but we learn that he was "famous for the building of cities, and for rebuilding the walls of Trinovantum3, which he also surrounded with innumerable towers . . . and though he had many other cities, yet he loved this above them all, and resided in it the greater part of the year; for which reason it was afterwards called Kaerlud, and by the corruption of the word, Caerlondon; and again by change of languages, in process of time, London; as also by foreigners who arrived here, and reduced this country under their subjection, it was called Londres. At last, when he was dead, his body was buried by the gate which to this time is called in the British tongue after his name Parthlud, and in the Saxon, Ludesgata." He was succeeded by his brother, Cassibellawn (Cassivelaunus), during whose reign Julius Caesar first invaded Britain.
Lludd, however, is not entirely dependent upon Geoffrey of Monmouth for his reputation as a king of Britain. One of the old Welsh romances,1 translated by Lady Charlotte Guest in her Mabinogion, relates the rebuilding of London by Lludd in almost the same words as Geoffrey. The story which these pseudo-historical details introduce is, however, an obviously mythological one. It tells us how, in the days of Lludd, Britain was oppressed by three plagues. The first was the arrival of a strange race of sorcerers called the "Coranians", who had three qualities which made them unpopular; they paid their way in "fairy money", which, though apparently real, returned afterwards--like the shields, horses, and hounds made by Gwydion son of Dôn, to deceive Pryderi--into the fungus out of which it had been charmed by magic; they could hear everything that was said over the whole of Britain, in however low a tone, provided only that the wind met it; and they could not be injured by any weapon. The second was "a shriek that came on every May eve, over every hearth in the Island of Britain, and went through people's hearts and so scared them that the men lost their hue and their strength, and the women their children, and the young men and the maidens their senses, and all the animals and trees and the earth and the waters were left barren". The third was a disappearance of the food hoarded in the king's palace, which was so complete that a year's provisions vanished in a single night, and so mysterious that no one could ever find out its cause.
From The Religion of the Ancient Celts by J. A. MacCulloch
In the stories of Etain and of Lud, reborn as Setanta, this idea of divine transformation and rebirth occurs. A similar idea may underlie the tale of Fionn and Mongan. As to the tales of Gwion and the Swineherds, the latter the servants of gods, and perhaps themselves regarded once as divinities, who in their rebirth as bulls are certainly divine animals, they present some features which require further consideration. The previous transformations in both cases belong to the Transformation Combat formula of many Märchen, and obviously were not part of the original form of the myths. In all such Märchen the antagonists are males, hence the rebirth incident could not form part of them. In the Welsh tale of Gwion and in the corresponding Taliesin poem, the ingenious fusion of the Märchen formula with an existing myth of rebirth must have taken place at an early date. This is also true of The Two Swineherds, but in this case, since the myth told how two gods took the form of worms and were reborn of cows, the formula had to be altered. Both remain alive at the end of the combat, contrary to the usual formula, because both were males and both were reborn. The fusion is skilful, because the reborn personages preserve a remembrance of their former transformations,1208 just as Mongan knows of his former existence as Fionn. In other cases there is no such remembrance. Etain had forgotten her former existence, and Cúchulainn does not appear to know that he is a rebirth of Lug.
From Short History of Wales, by Owen M. Edwards
Lud of the Silver Hand was the god of flocks and ships. His caves are in Dyved still, and his was the temple on Ludgate Hill in London. Merlin was a god of knowledge; he could foretell events. Ceridwen was the goddess of wisdom; she distilled wisdom-giving drops in a cauldron. Gwydion created a beautiful girl from flowers, "from red rose, and yellow broom, and white anemony." I am not quite sure what Coil did, but I have heard children singing the history of "old King Cole." Olwen also walked through Wales in heathen times, and it is said that three white flowers rose behind her wherever she had put her foot.
From Irish Druids And Old Irish Religions James Bonwick
Prof. Bevan, in a recent lecture at the Gresham College, showed how the Celtic gods were Romanized. Ogmius became Mercury; Grannos, Apollo; Caturix or Camulos, Mars; Bridgit, Minerva; Esas, Jupiter. He thought the Irish religion was partly of aboriginal forms of belief, and partly Druidic. He considered the transition from Druidism to Christianity a very gradual one. Lud or Llud, whose temple was on the site of St. Paul's Cathedral, he recognized as the Irish Nodens.
