Therefore the Fomors were held to be more ancient than the gods, before whom they were, however, destined to fall in the end. Offspring of “Chaos and Old Night”, they were, for the most part, huge and deformed. Some had but one arm and one leg apiece, while others had the heads of goats, horses, or bulls.[59] The most famous, and perhaps the most terrible of them all was Balor, whose father is said to have been one Buarainech, that is, the “cow-faced”,[60] and who combined in himself the two classical rôles of the Cyclops and the Medusa. Though he had two eyes, one was always kept shut, for it was so venomous that it slew anyone on whom its look fell. This malignant quality of Balor’s eye was not natural to him, but was the result of an accident. Urged by curiosity, he once looked in at the window of a house where his father’s sorcerers were preparing a magic potion, and the poisonous smoke from the cauldron reached his eye, infecting it with so much of its own deadly nature as to make it disastrous to others. Neither god nor giant seems to have been exempt from its dangers; so that Balor was only allowed to live on condition that he kept his terrible eye shut. On days of battle he was placed opposite to the enemy, the lid of the destroying eye was lifted up with a hook, and its gaze withered all who stood before it. The memory of Balor and his eye still lingers in Ireland: the “eye of Balor” is the name for what the peasantry of other countries call the “evil eye”; stories are still told of _Balar Beimann_, or “Balor of the Mighty Blows”; and “Balor’s Castle” is the name of a curious cliff on Tory Island. This island, off the coast of Donegal, was the Fomorian outpost upon earth, their real abode being in the cold depths of the sea. This rule, however, as to the hideousness of the Fomors had its exceptions. Elathan, one of their chiefs, is described in an old manuscript as of magnificent presence—a Miltonic prince of darkness. “A man of fairest form,” it says, “with golden hair down to his shoulders. He wore a mantle of gold braid over a shirt interwoven with threads of gold. Five golden necklaces were round his neck, and a brooch of gold with a shining precious stone thereon was on his breast. He carried two silver spears with rivets of bronze, and his sword was golden-hilted and golden-studded.”[61] Nor was his son less handsome. His name was Bress, which means “beautiful”, and we are told that every beautiful thing in Ireland, “whether plain, or fortress, or ale, or torch, or woman, or man”, was compared with him, so that men said of them, “that is a Bress”.[62]