nations of the name of the Myrmidons, as recorded by Strabo.[1] They left their work unfinished, for we are told that they fled, and converted their bolga or bags into coracles, in which they ventured on the sea. This last part of the story is the only one worth noticing, and it makes for the explanation which I have suggested: in other words, the latter would include it and render it intelligible. The conjectural interpretation offered to you of the term Fir Bolg[2] may be said to derive some confirmation from the name of their allies the Fir Domnann. Now Domnann should be the genitive of a name making in the nominative Domnu or Domna; and construing Dé Domnann in the same way as Dé Danann, I take Domnu to have been the name of a goddess and not of a god. Put it back into what must have been its early form, and you will have a nominative Dumnu and a genitive Dumnonos, implying a stem Dumnon: form from the latter an adjective Dumnonios, you will then have as its plural Dumnonii, the attested name of two peoples of
- ↑ See Meineke's (Teubner's) edition, Bk. viij. 6, 16 (p. 532): Μυρμιδόνος δὲ κληθῆναί φασιν . . . . ὅτι μυρμήκων τροπον ὀρύττοντες τὴν γῆν ἐπιφέροιεν ἐπὶ τὰς πέτρας ὥστ' ἔχειν γεωργεῖν, ἐν δὲ τοῖς ὀρύγμασιν φειδόμενοι πλίνθων.
- ↑ Fir Bolg is possibly connected with the story of the sacks containing armed men, from which Dunbolg is supposed to have derived its name, and also with that of the slaughter of the nobles of Erinn, said to have been effected by the Aithech Tuatha at a place called Mag Bolg or the Bag Plain, now called Moybolgue, in the county of Cavan (Four Masters, A.D. 76). Other place-names involving the same vocable occur in Wales and Scotland. Their history is obscure, but one at least of them dates from the Roman occupation, namely, Blatobulgium, which must have meant the Meal-bag: it is supposed to have been at Middleby Kirk, near the river Annan: see my Celtic Britain, pp. 268-9, 280-1.
