made them hated as descendants of Simon (p. 213). Their name is puzzling, and it is sometimes said to have been borne by the province of Leinster, which agrees with the story of Slainge and his Gailióin. At first it looks as if we had in it a word of the same origin as the name of the Galli of the continent, a supposition which would tend to make of them a purely human and Aryan people. This would, however, be highly inconsistent with the usual habit of treating the Fir Bolg and the Fir Domnann as subjugated or enslaved tribes.[1] But this manner of speaking of them is somewhat misleading, and we should come nearer the truth if we called them an uncanny and detested race; and the means adopted to get rid of them are characteristic. Thus O'Curry, setting out from queen Medb's treatment of the Gailióin, uses the following words:[2] "Such, however, was the envy and jealousy, if not the fears, which their valour and fame had raised against them in the country, that the Druids of Erinn, whether at the instigation of Queen Medbh or not I cannot say, pronounced withering satires and incantations against them (according to the story); so that their whole race became extinct in the land, excepting a few, and these few of the 'Gallians,' as well as the whole of their fellow foreign tribes, the Laighinns and the Domnanns, were afterwards totally extirpated by the monarch Tuathal Teachtmar, on his accession to the throne of Erinn, A.D. 79." In other words, as you will see, the bulk of the Gailióin were not quelled by force of arms, but exorcised by the druids or
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VI. GODS, DEMONS AND HEROES.
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