The Mythology of Ancient Britain and Ireland Volume 13

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1906 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER IV THE MYTHICAL HISTORY OF IRELAND According to the early monkish annalists, who sought to nullify the pagan traditions against which they fought by turning them into a pseudohistory, Ireland was first inhabited by a lady named Cessair and her followers, shortly after the flood. They describe her as a grand-daughter of Noah; but it is more likely that she represented a tribal goddess or divine ancestress of the pre-Celtic people in Ireland.1 Whoever she may have been, her influence was not lasting. She perished, with all her race, leaving a free field to her successors. We say 'field' with intention; for Ireland consisted then of only one plain, treeless and grassless, but watered by three lakes and nine rivers. The race that succeeded Cessair, however, soon set to work to remedy this. Partholon, who 1 Rhfa, Celtic Britain, Third edition, p. 288. landed with twenty-four males and twenty-four females upon the first of May (the Celtic feast of 'Beltaine'), enlarged the island to four plains with seven new lakes. The newcomers themselves also increased and multiplied, so that in three centuries their original forty-eight members had become five thousand. But, on the three hundredth anniversary of their coming, an epidemic sprang up which annihilated them. They gathered together upon the original first-created plain to die, and the place of their funeral is still marked by the mound of Tallaght, near Dublin. Before these early colonists, Ireland had been inhabited by a race of demons or giants, described as monstrous in size and hideous in shape, many of them being footless and handless, while others had the heads of animals. Their name Fornor, which means 'under wave, '1 and their descent from a goddess named Domnu, or 'the Deep, '2 seem to...