Milesians (Irish)

The Milesians or sons of Míl are the final race to settle in Ireland, according to the Lebor Gabála Érenn, a medieval Irish Christian history.

[1][2] The 9th century Latin work Historia Brittonum (History of the Britons) says that Ireland was settled by three groups of people from the Iberian Peninsula.

Goídel's offspring, the Goidels (Gaels), leave Egypt at the same time as the Exodus of the Israelites and settle in Scythia.

In some versions of the Lebor Gabála, there was a succession dispute between Refloir and Míl (also called Galam) over the kingship of Scythia.

There, Goídel's descendant Breogán founds a city called Brigantia, and builds a tower from the top of which his son Íth glimpses Ireland.

The Gaels agree, but once their ships are nine waves from Ireland, the Tuath Dé conjure up a great wind that prevents them sailing back to land.

Modern scholars, however, believe that these were fictional characters and that the writers were attempting to give the medieval dynasties more legitimacy.

[11][12] They were inspired by other medieval Christian pseudo-histories, such as Galician cleric Paulus Orosius's History Against the Pagans, Saint Jerome's Chronicle, and the works of Isidore.

John Carey notes that if Iberia was thought to be the part of mainland Europe nearest to Ireland, it would be natural "to see it as the source of arrivals from overseas".

However, Joseph Lennon writes that "no link exists among Míl, Milesians and Miletus in the early origin legends".

He considers it more likely that the name 'Milesian' came from later English-language translations of the legend, noting "'Milesian' is not used to refer to the Irish with any regularity until the eighteenth century".

[2] Professor Dáithí Ó hÓgain writes that the "account of how the sons of Míl took Ireland was a literary fabrication, but it was accepted as conventional history by poets and scholars down until the 19th century".

Geoffrey Keating's Foras Feasa ar Éirinn (written c.1634) used the myth to promote the legitimacy of the Stuart claim to royal authority in Ireland (related to the origin of the Lia Fáil), demonstrating that Charles I was descended, through Brian Boru, Éber and Galamh, from Noah and, ultimately, from Adam.

[20] In the early modern period many Irishmen and women fled to Spain as a result of political and military turmoil in their homeland.

[21] Among the many theories regarding Stone of Scone origins, Medieval Scottish lawyer Baldred Bisset put forward the theory that it was transported from ancient Egypt via the Iberian Peninsula or Celtiberia to Ireland by Scota, the daughter of an Egyptian Pharaoh, who was also the wife of Goídel Glas, an ancestor of the Milesians.