Page:Origin and Growth of Religion (Rhys).djvu/599

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VI. GODS, DEMONS AND HEROES.
583

or the Estuary of Domnu, which was probably Broadhaven in Irrus Domnann,[1] now called Erris, in the county of Mayo, and that this battle, the first said to have been fought in Ireland, occurred at a spot called Slemna Maige Itha.[2] Their leader is said to have been of the mythic race of Umór (p. 150): he was a Fomorian called Cichol Gri cen Chos or the Footless, and his followers have been described as not men, but demons and monsters with one hand and one foot each.[3] Cichol's mother's name is given as Lot, which means destruction; and the whole brood is always treated as foreigners in the legendary history of Ireland. The next invasion was that led by Nemed, who is to be identified with the Welsh Nevyᵭ, the owner, according to a Welsh triad (iij. 97), of the ship in which the human race was preserved from extinction by the deluge caused by the bursting of the Lake of Llion: so there is a certain fitness in making Nemed one of the first to take possession of the island-home of the Goidels. He and his sons, however, were not left in quiet possession of the country,

  1. According to O'Curry, the Bay of Malahide in the county of Dublin was formerly called Inver Domnann; but it is not improbable there may have been more than one water so named. I have followed Mr. Hennessy, Bk. of Fenagh, p. 18, note.
  2. The Four Masters, A.M. 2530: Keating gives the name, pp. 70-1, less precisely as Magh Iotha.
  3. Umór is also written Ughmór and Uthmór, whence Sliab Umór, Ughmór or Uthmór, which O'Curry believed to have been the Goidelic name for the Caucasus: see his Manners, ij. 232. Cichol Gri is compared by M. d. A. de Jubainville, Cycle Myth. p. 32, with the Hindu demon Vritra; and as to the other demons, the same author, p. 95, quotes the Bk. of Leinster, 5a, and Hennessy's Chronicum Scotorum p. 6. See also the Four Masters, A.M. 2530, and Keating, pp 68—71, by both of whon Cichol's name is written Cioccal or Ciocal.