GLOSSARY III:

IRELAND AND THE ELDER ISLES

 

 

 

FEW DEFINITE FACTS ARE RELATED of Partholón, a rebel prince of Dahaut, who after killing his father fled to Leinster. The Fomoire derived from North Ulfland, then known as Fomoiry. King Nemed, arriving with his folk from Norway, fought three great battles with the Fomoire near Donegal. The Ska, as the Nemedians called themselves, were fierce warriors; the Fomoire, defeated twice, gained final victory only through the magic of three one-legged witches: Cuch, Gadish and Fèhor: a battle in which Nemed was killed.

The Ska had fought with honor and valor; even in defeat they commanded the respect of the victors, so that they were allowed a year and a day to make their black ships ready for an onward voyage. At length, after three weeks of banquets, games, songs and the drinking of mead, they set sail from Ireland with Starn, first son of Nemed, as their king. Starn led the surviving Ska south to Skaghane, northernmost of the Hesperians, at the western verge of the Elder Isles.

Nemed’s second son, Fergus, sailed to Armorica and assembled an army of a Celtic people known as the Firbolg, which he led back to Ireland. Along the way the Firbolg put into Fflaw at the tip of Wysrod, but so vast an army came to confront them that they left without a battle and continued to Ireland, where they became pre-eminent across the land.

A century later the Tuatha de Danaan, after an epic migration from central Europe through Asia Minor, Sicily and Spain, crossed the Cantabrian Gulf to the Elder Isles, and established themselves in Dascinet, Troicinet and Lyonesse. Sixty years later the Tuatha split into two factions, one of which moved on to Ireland, to fight the Firbolg at the First and Second Battles of Mag Tuired.

The second Celtic surge which propelled the Milesians into Ireland and the Brythni into Britain bypassed the Elder Isles. Celts nonetheless migrated into Hybras in small groups and spread everywhere, as Celtic place-names across the isles attested. Tribes fleeing Britain after the defeat of Boudicaa forced their presence upon the rocky northern foreshore of Hybras, and established the Celtic kingdom Godelia.