The Mythology of the British Islands: An Introduction to Celtic Myth, Legend, Poetry, and RomanceSquire, Charles
General
The Mythology of the British Islands: An Introduction to Celtic Myth, Legend, Poetry, and Romance
Squire, Charles
Celts -- Folklore; Mythology, Celtic
They seem also to have been considered as in some way connected with the
Fomors. Just as the largest Iberian tribe was called the “Men of Domnu”,
so the Fomors were called the “Gods of Domnu”, and Indech, one of their
kings, is a “son of Domnu”. Thus eternal battle between the gods,
children of Danu, and the giants, children of Domnu, would reflect, in
the supernatural world, the perpetual warfare between invading Celt and
resisting Iberian. It is shadowed, too, in the later heroic cycle. The
champions of Ulster, Aryans and Gaels _par excellence_, have no such
bitter enemies as the Fir Domnann of Munster and the Fir Gaillion of
Leinster. A few scholars would even see in the later death-struggle
between the High King of Ireland and his rebellious Fenians the last
historic or mythological adumbration of racial war.[101]
The enemies alike of Fir Bolg and Fomor, the Tuatha Dé Danann, gods of
the Gaels, were the next to arrive. What is probably the earliest
account tells us that they came from the sky. Later versions, however,
give them a habitation upon earth—some say in the north, others in the
“southern isles of the world”. They had dwelt in four mythical cities
called Findias, Gorias, Murias, and Falias, where they had learned
poetry and magic—to the primitive mind two not very dissimilar
things—and whence they had brought to Ireland their four chief
treasures. From Findias came Nuada’s sword, from whose stroke no one
ever escaped or recovered; from Gorias, Lugh’s terrible lance; from
Murias, the Dagda’s cauldron; and from Falias, the Stone of Fál, better
known as the “Stone of Destiny”, which afterwards fell into the hands of
the early kings of Ireland. According to legend, it had the magic
property of uttering a human cry when touched by the rightful King of
Erin. Some have recognized in this marvellous stone the same rude block
which Edward I brought from Scone in the year 1300, and placed in
Westminster Abbey, where it now forms part of the Coronation Chair. It
is a curious fact that, while Scottish legend asserts this stone to have
come to Scotland from Ireland, Irish legend should also declare that it
was taken from Ireland to Scotland. This would sound like conclusive
evidence, but it is none the less held by leading modern
archæologists—including Dr. W. F. Skene, who has published a monograph
on the subject[102]—that the Stone of Scone and the Stone of Tara were
never the same. Dr. Petrie identifies the real _Lia Fáil_ with a stone
which has always remained in Ireland, and which was removed from its
original position on Tara Hill, in 1798, to mark the tomb of the rebels
buried close by under a mound now known as “the Croppies’ grave”.[103]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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