VI. GODS, DEMONS AND HEROES.
589
removed from the domain of real history than some of those they have in part accepted, would at once render the inconsistencies and contradictions much more glaring. Even as I have sketched them to vou they are sufficiently so, and in that the Fomori are, among other things, not made to fight against the Fir Bolg when these last come and divide the whole island between them. The reason was, it need hardly be said, that the names Fir Bolg and Fomori mean the same sort of mythic beings, which is confirmed by their common hostility against the Tuatha Dé Danann and the Milesians. Their close kinship results also from other considerations,[1] but it must not be
- ↑ Such are the following: (1) Of the five leaders of the Fir Bolg, three may be said to have been Ganns, for they were Gann, Sen-gann or Old Gann, and Genann or Little Gann, while Gann and Genann also appear (Keating, p. 85) as leaders of the Fomori in battles won over them by Nemed and his Sons (compare also the three Genans in Stokes & Windisch, Ir. Texte, ij. 122, 153). As to the remaining two Fir Bolg leaders, Slainge and Rudraige, these were also the names of sons of Partholon, and Rudraige was important as a chief ancestor of the Picts and Scots of Ulster, or the Ulster men who were reckoned 'True Ultonians,' and represented the ancient non-Celtic inhabitants. He is probably the same with Rugraide, great-grandson of Fomor, placed long afterwards in the Four Masters' arrangement of the legendary history of Ireland, A.M. 4981. (2) Next may be mentioned the circumstance that one of the leaders of the Fomori in the battle of the northern Moytura was Indech son of the goddess Domnu, at whose inver the Fomori were said to have landed before the time of Partholon (Keating, p. 70); while the Fir Domnann or Men of Domnu formed one of the chief peoples engaged in the Fir Bolg invasion; according to some versions of the story, they also landed at the same inver of the goddess Domnu (Four Masters, A.M. 3266). (3) On the other hand, the Fomori in the time of Nemed had to encounter him and his sons as their enemies, while three men called Sons of Nemed were the slayers of Echaid, king of the Fir Bolg, at the battle of the southern Moytura (p. 586). (4) Some accounts bring Fir Domnann and Gailióin
