Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 13.djvu/260

tribe was tlie race of Ibatli, grandson of larbonel the prophet, son of Nemed. The new-comers under a king called Niiadu demand the sovereignty of the country from the Firbolg king Eochaid Mac Erca, who refuses, and there upon they fight a battle at Mag Tuired Conga, now Moytura near Cong in the county Mayo, the site of which is still traditionally remembered, and many graves belong ing to the period of cremation have been found there. The Firbolgs were worsted in this battle, and, as in all ethnic legends, almost annihilated, and the remainder driven out of the country. 1 Thirty years after the conquest of the Firbolgs, the Tuatha D6 Danann fought a great battle with the Fomorians at another Mag Tuired, which is dis tinguished from that of Cong by being called the Northern. Its site is placed by tradition near Lough Arrow on the borders of Sligo and Itoscommon, at a place where many graves and pillar-stones still exist. The last of the prehistoric races of Ireland are the so- called Milesians or Scots. The immediate eponym of the new race was Galam from Gal, " valour," a name which might be expressed by the Latin miles, a " knight," whence came the names Milesius and Milesians. Among the names which appear in the pedigree, which is of course carried back without a break to Noah, are several worthy of the attention of archaeologists, namely, Breogan or Bregan, Eber Scot, G6edal Glas, Fenius Farsaid, Allait, Nuadu, Sru, and Esru. Breogan, according to the legend, was the grandfather of Galam or Milesius, who founded Brigantia in Spain. With all their drawbacks, the Irish ethnic legends, when stript of their elaborate details and Biblical and classical loans, express the broad facts of the peopling of Ireland, and are in accordance with the results of archaeological in vestigation. At the earliest period the country was well wooded, and the interior full of marshes and lakes ; it was occupied by a sparse population, who appear in later times as " forest tribes " (Tuatha Feda), and were doubtless of the aboriginal (Iberic) race of western and southern Europe. The story of Partholan represents the incoming of the first bronze-armed Celts, who were a Goidelic tribe akin to the later Scots that settled on the sea-coast, and built the for tresses occupying the principal headlands. They formed with the forest tribes the basis of the population in the Early Bronze age. Afterwards came the various tribes known by the general name of Firbolgs. It is not neces sary to suppose that all the tribes included under this name came at the same time, or even that they were closely akin. The legend names several tribes, and tells us that they came into Ireland at different places from Britain. The effect of their immigrations now appears to have been that in the north the people were Cruithni, or Picts of the Goidelic branch of the Celts ; in the east and centre, British and Belgic tribes ; and in Munster, when not distinctly Iberic, of a southern or Gaulish type. The fertile plain lying between the Wicklow and Carling- ford mountains, and especially the part of it south of the Boyne (Mag Breg), was open to tribes coming from the oppo site coast, and has accordingly been at all times a landing place of invading tribes. This region was occupied by the tribe of Nemed before the arrival of the Firbolgs, if we be lieve the legend; but the event certainly belongs to a later period, though still to the time of the movements and displacement of peoples which led to the immigration of those tribes. The Fomorians, with whom the Nemedians fought, may have been merely some of those incoming 1 They were, however, only subdued, for long after there were Firbolg kings of Olnegraacht (the ancient name of Connaught), and the people were very numerous in Ireland in St Patrick s time ; indeed, it is probable that they then formed the largest element of the population. [HISTORY. tribes. The Irish legend brings the Nemedians frum the east of Europe, which of course only means that they came from a distance, perhaps from Armorica or some other part of Gaul. Nemed s tribes were probably the builders of the tumuli of Meath, and the introducers of the worship of Dia and Ana, in other words, they were the mysterious Tuatha De Danann (" tribes of Dia and Ana "). Nemed was probably only another name for Dia, and his wife was Macha, an appellative of Ana. The name Nemed itself is of great interest, for it is evidently connected with ncr/i, heaven, used also in the secondary sense of a sacred object upon which oaths were sworn. The Milesian legend seems to consist of two or perhaps of three events. Eber and Erimon, two sons of Galam, or Milesius, the leaders of the invading forces, fight a battle at Sliab Mis in western Kerry with Eriu, the queen of Ceitheoir or Mac Gre ne, " the son of the Sun," one of the three joint kings of the Tuatha De Danann, whom they defeat. Eber or Heber then marches to Tailti in Meath, while his brother Erimon or Heremon sails round to the mouth of the Boyne, where he lands and marches to meet his brother advancing from the south. This skilful strate gic movement betrays the late invention of the legend. The first fact that underlies the story is the incoming of some powerful and well-armed tribe who seized upon the plain between the Liffey and the Boyne, and made it the centre of an encroaching power. The eponyrn of this tribe was Erimon, a name foreign to the pantheon of the tribes of Dia and Ana. 2 The new tribes arrived in Ireland towards the close of the prehistoric period, and not long before the beginning of the Christian era, or possibly as late as the first century of it. They were Goidelic, and were related to the dominant clans of Munster, and the Clanna Euclraide or Ulster clans, though perhaps not so closely to the latter as to the former. When the sons of Galam had defeated the kings of the tribes of Dia and Ana, they partitioned Ireland between themselves and their kinsmen. Erimon got Leinster and Connaught; Eber Find, his brother, North Munster ; Lugaid, son of Ith, brother of Galam, South Munster; and Eber, son of Ir, son of Galam, the pro genitor of Rud or the Rudraide, the immediate eponym of the Ultonians, Ulster. Eber Find, the leader of the north Munster tribes, and Lugaid of the South Munster ones, were grandsons of Breogan, the stem-father of all the new tribes. A long struggle took place between their descend ants, in which those of Eber Find ultimately gained the upper hand, and the descendants of Lugaid were gradually pressed into a corner of the county of Cork. This struggle and the position of the tribes of Eber in the plain of Munster seem to show that the latter were, what the legend pretends, a part of the incoming tribes which we shall henceforward call Scots, and which landed, not in Kerry, but in Meath. The places supposed to have derived their names from the forty captains of the invading Scots, such as the plain of Brega, SHab Cualand, &c., are all in that part of Ireland already spoken of as the landing place of invading tribes, or in the great central plain stretching west and south-west from it. There seems little doubt that these clans of Breogan or Scots were closely related to the Brigantes, perhaps they were even tribes of that great clan. The Brigantes who occupied the basin of the Barrow and Nore, and ultimately the county Waterford, according to Ptolemy, 2 Herr Mannhardt connects Erimon with Irinc or Irmin, a god or divine hero of the Germans, and both with Aryamo (Aryaman), the deified ancestral king of the Hindus, who ruled Elysium, and whose ^ath was the Milky Way. He also thinks that these words as well as Eriu contain the same stem as Aryan, and that consequently Aryamo may have been at one time the national god of all Aryans. Some curious particulars might be added here respecting Bonn, the brother of Eber and Erimon, which appear to give great interest to this hypo thesis.