Fomorians
One theory is that the Fomorians were supernatural beings representing the wild or destructive powers of nature; personifications of chaos, darkness, death, blight and drought.
A third suggestion, which has more support among scholars, is that it comes from a hypothetical Old Irish term for a demon or phantom, found in the name of The Morrígan and cognate with the archaic English word "mare" (which survives in "nightmare").
[1][2] Sometimes they are said to have the body of a man and the head of a goat, according to an 11th-century text in Lebor na hUidre (the Book of the Dun Cow), or to have had one eye, one arm and one leg.
Dáithí Ó hÓgáin writes that the Tuath Dé gaining agricultural knowledge from the Fomorians is similar to the Norse and Vedic versions, where the defeated races represent the fertility of the soil.
[3] The medieval myth of Partholón says that his followers were the first to invade Ireland after the flood, but the Fomorians were already there: Geoffrey Keating reports a tradition that the Fomorians, led by Cichol Gricenchos, had arrived two hundred years earlier and lived on fish and fowl until Partholon came[13] (this detail only appears in the 3rd Redaction of the Lebor Gabála Érenn), bringing the plough and oxen.
After Nemed's death, Conand and Morc enslaved his people and demanded a heavy tribute: two thirds of their children, grain and cattle.
Nemed's son Fergus Lethderg gathered an army of sixty thousand, rose up against them and destroyed Conand's Tower, but Morc attacked them with a huge fleet, and there was great slaughter on both sides.
The sea rose over them and drowned most of the survivors: only thirty of Nemed's people escaped in a single ship, scattering to the other parts of the world.
Next, the Tuatha Dé Danann, who are usually supposed to have been the gods of the Goidelic Irish, defeated the Fir Bolg in the first Battle of Mag Tuired and took possession of Ireland.
He was the result of a union between Ériu of the Tuatha Dé Danann and the Fomorian prince Elatha, who had come to her one night by sea on a silver boat.
However Bres turned out to be a bad king who forced the Tuatha Dé to work as slaves and pay tribute to the Fomorians.
When the two forces met on the field of battle, it was said that to attack the fierce Fomorian flank was like striking a head against a cliff, placing a hand into a serpent's nest, or facing up to fire.
According to the Irish version of the Historia Britonum of Nennius, the Fomorians are referred to as mariners who were forced into a tower near the sea by the Tuatha Dé Danann.
In the medieval Irish tale entitled The Training of Cú Chulainn, preserved as a copy by Richard Tipper in British Library, Egerton MS 106, it gives the following mention: Then they parted from each other, and Cúchulainn went and looked forth on the great sea.
The damsel answered and this she said: "A royal tribute which the tribe of Fomorians carry out of this country every seventh year, namely, the first-born of the king's children.
And thus was that vessel: a single warrior, dark, gloomy, devilish, on the stern of that good ship, and he was laughing roughly, ill-fatedly, so that every one saw his entrails and his bowels through the body of his gullet.
Then the big man came ashore to them into the strand, and stretched forth his long, sinewy, hideous arm to seize Cúchulainn in the very front of his royal tribute.
[22] Rawlinson B 502, Section 26, page 330,[23] says: Bress m. Elathan m. Delbáeth m. Deirgthind m. Ochtaich m. Sithchind m. Molaich m. Lárgluind m. Ciarraill m. Fóesaim m. Meircill m. Leccduib m. Iachtaich m. Libuirnn m. Lathairn m. Soairtt m. Sibuirt m. Siuccat m. Stairnn m. Saltait m. Cair m. h-Iphit m. Philist m. Fuith m. Caim m. Nóe m. Laméch
