Those of the Fir Bolg and their allies who escaped from the battle of southern Moytura made their way into the islands[1] of Arann, Islay and Rathlin, the Western Islands of Scotland and many others, including, according to the Historia Brittonum of Nennius, the Isle of Man.[2] They are afterwards said to have been expelled the islands by the Picts, whereupon they obtained land subject to tribute from Cairbre Niafer king of Leinster; but the tribute drove them to Ailill and Medb in Connaught, a movement known as the migration of the Children of Umór (p. 150). From Medb they obtained lands; and not a few local names in the west are traced to them, such as Loch Cimbe (now Lough Hackett in the county of Galway), called after one of their chiefs named Cimbe
- ↑ Keating, pp. 106-8.
- ↑ See San-Marte's Nennius et Gildas, §14 (p. 36), where one reads: Builc autem cum suis tenuit Euboniam insulam, et alias circiter.
Labraid Longsech and his Gailióin are also said to have come to land (Four Masters, A.M. 4658; O'Curry, p. 257). In fact, they form the same invasion, and this is one of the reasons why the Gailióin are reckoned among those in Ireland who were not of Goidelic descent, as in the Irish Nennius (pp. 268-9). On the other hand, they are treated, in a passage published in the Senchus Mór, i. 70, as one of three chief peoples of ancient Erinn, which seems to mean that the name was regarded as merely synonymous with that of Lagin, or Leinster men. The editors of the Irish Nennius have only given us, at p. 120, the faulty form Gueleon and the shorter one Gleoin, but at p. 130 they have the regular genitive Geleoin (more correctly Geleóin), corresponding to a nominative Geleón; and as the Irish for the classical genitive Geloni was Geleóin, the plural Geloni should yield Geleóin. Here, however, a false etymology introduced a gái, 'spear,' making the spelling into Gaileóin, of which we have an alternative spelling in Gailióin, seemingly tho oldest form occurring. This yielded a variant written Gailiuin; further, the genitive of Gailióin would be Gailión, which had a variant Gailián, also written Galian, as in the Bk. of Leinster, 44b, where O'Curry, p. 482, loosely explains it as 'an ancient name of Leinster.'
