The mythology of the Irish Celts was not originally shaped in Ireland. They brought it along with them from central Europe, and just as the ancient scriptures of the Hindus bear traces of having been originally composed in a climate very different from that of Hindustan, so I think the Irish mythology shows some traces of its continental origin. The Fomori of Irish tradition were not inhabitants of Ireland. They always appear as invaders. They come from the north, from the unknown places of the northern ocean. The demons who brought the pestilence to Ireland in 1084 were Fomorians. They are always enemies of the people of Ireland. They were enemies to Parthalon's people, and after them to Nemed's people, the Fir Bolg, and after them to the Gaels. They were a malevolent race of immortals. In the popular view, among heathens, a people expected to be defended by the gods of its own worship. If a hostile people had other gods, these were expected to fight on the other side. Hence there was a natural tendency to regard a double set of immortals, one party being foreign and malevolent, the other domestic and benevolent. But the Irish people, before the Norse invasions, knew no human enemies in the northern ocean. Accordingly, I think that the Fomorians originally belonged to the continental geography of Celtic mythology, and that the sea from which they came was not the ocean to the north of Ireland but the Baltic and the North Sea, and that their islands were originally perhaps Britain and Ireland and the islands of the Baltic and the Scandinavian peninsula itself, which was thought to be an island when it first became known to the Greeks. The Fomorians would be perhaps in part identical with, in part associated with, the gods of the peoples dwelling on the shores of those northern seas before the Celtic expansion northward and north-westward.