become quite synonymous. The Fir Bolg are more like the human race than are the Fomori, and through Sreng, Ailill of Cruachan and others, they are supposed to have been the ancestors of historical families in Ireland, whereas no family is known to have traced its descent directly to a Fomorian. This distinction may here be disregarded, as it seems only to mean that Sreng, Ailill and analogous figures, were, to certain tribes, forms of the ancestral Dis, and the identity of Fir Bolg and Fomori may for our present purpose be assumed. This is an important step in the simplification of the question before us, which is to discover an intelligible line of demarcation between them and the Tuatha Dé Danann. In order to come nearer to that, the names here in point have to be now more closely examined. Let us begin with the most intelligible of them, namely, that of the Fomori. It is derived partly from the Irish word muir, 'sea,' and Irish historians persistently treat it as meaning sea-rovers or pirates, as if they understood the whole compound to mean transmarini, whereas it can only mean submarini, as the prefix fo does not mean 'beyond, over or on,' but 'under or below.' There is a short story illustrative of this in a commentary on one of the old Irish laws: it runs thus:[1]
"One time then thereafter Fergus and his charioteer (Muena his name) set out to the sea, reached it, and they slept on the sea-shore. Now luchorpáin came to the
- ↑ Senchus Mór, i. 70-1: it has been published also by stokes in the Rev. Celt. i. 256-7, with the translation here borrowed word for word from him.
begging satirists successively, his enemies found the manœuvre answer their purpose.
