Miled having died in Spain, his eight sons, with their mother, Scota, families and followers, at length set out on their venturous voyage to their Isle of Destiny.1
     In a dreadfulstorm that the supposedly wizard De Danann raised up against them, when  they attempted to land in Ireland, five of the sons of Milesius, with great numbers of their followers, were lost, their fleet dispersed and it seemed for a time as if none of them would ever enjoy the Isle of Destiny.
     Ancient manuscripts preserve the prayer that, it is said, their poet Amergin, now prayed for them--
     "I pray that they reach the land of Eirinn, those who are riding upon the great, productive,vast sea:
     "That they be distributed upon her plains, her mountains, and her valleys; upon her forests that shed showers of nuts and all fruits; upon her rivers and her cataracts; upon her lakes and her great waters; upon her spring-abounding hills:
     "That they may hold their fairs and equestrian sports upon her territories:
     "That there may be a king from them in Tara; and that Tara be the territory of their many kings:
     "That noble Eirinn be the home of the ships and boats of the sons of Milesius:
     "Eirinn which is now in darkness, it is for her that this oration is pronounced:
     "Let the learned wives of Breas and Buaigne pray that we may reach the noble woman, great Eirinn.
     "Let Eremon pray, and let Ir and Eber implore, that we may reach Eirinn."
     Eventually they made land--Eber with the survivors of his following landing at Inver Sceni, in Bantry Bay; and afterwards defeating a De Danann host under Queen Eire but losing their own Queen Scota in the fray--and Eremon with his people at Inver Colpa (mouth of the Boyne).
     When they had joined their forces, in Meath, they went against the De Danann in general battle at taillte, and routed the latter with great slaughter.  The three kings and the three queens of the De Danann were slain, many of them killed, and the remainder dispersed. 
     The survivors fled into the remote hills and into the caves.  Possibly the glimpses of some of these fugitive hill-dwellers and cave-dwellers, caught in twilight and in moonlight, by succeeding generations of Milesians, coupled with the seemingly magical skill which they exercised, gave foundation for the later stories of enchanted folk, fairies, living under the Irish hills. 
     Though, a quaint tale preserved in the ancient Book of Leinster says that after Taillte it was left to Amergin, the Milesian poet and judge, to divide Eirinn between the two races,and that he shrewdy did so with technical justice--giving all above ground to his own people, and all underground to the De Danann!
     Another pleasant old belief is that the De Danann, being overthrown, were assembled by their great immortal Mannanan at Brugh of the Boyne, where, after counselling together, it was decided that, taking Bodb Derg, son of the Dagda, as their king, and receiving immortality from Mannanan, they should distribute themselves in their spirit land under the happy hills of Ireland--where they have, ever since, enjoyed never-ending bliss.2
     Of the Milesians, Eber and Eremon divided the land between them-Eremon getting the Northern half of the Island, and Eber the southern.  The Northeastern corner was accorded to the children of their lost brother, Ir, and the Southwestern corner to their cousin Lughaid, the son of Ith.
     An oft-told story says that when Eber and Eremon had divided their  followers, each taking an equal number of soldiers and an equal number of the men of every craft, there remained a harper and a poet.  Drawing lots for these, the harper fell to Eremon and the poet to Eber--which explains why,ever since, the North of Ireland has been celebrated for music, and the South for song.
     The peace that fell upon the land then, and the happiness of the Milesians, was only broken, when after a year, Eber's wife discovered that she must be possessed of the three pleasantest hills in Eirinn, else she could not remain one other night in the Island.  Now the pleasantest of all the Irish hills was Tara, which lay in Eremon's half.   And Eremon's wife would not have the covetousness of the other woman satisfied at her expense.  So, because of the quarrel of the women, the beautiful peace of the island was broken by battle. Eber was beaten, and the high sovereighty settled upon Eremon.
     It was in his reign, continues the legend, that the Cruitnigh or Picts arrived from the Continent.  They landed in the south-west, at the mouth of the River Slaney (Inver Slaigne).  A tribe of Britons who fought with poisoned arrows were at the time ravaging that corner of the Island.  The Picts helped to drive out the marauders, and in reward were granted a settlement there, from Crimthann, the chief of that quarter.  Afterwards they had an outfall with Crimthann--and it was decided that they should be passed into Alba (Scotland).3 The three Pictish chiefs were given Irish wives to take to Alba with them, on the condition that henceforth their royal line should descend according to the female succession--which it is said, was henceforth the law among the Alban Picts.
     Eremon's victory over Eber had slight effect in fixing on his lineage the succession to the overlordship for, through many hundreds of years afterward, the battle had to be refought, and the question settled once more--sometimes to the advantage of the Eremonians, sometimes to that of the Eberians.  A warlike people must have war.  Occasionally, during the reigns of the early Milesian kings, this want was filled for them by the Fomorians, who, though disastrously defeated by the De Danann at Northern Moytura, were far from being destroyed.  Irial, the prophet, the grandson of Eremon, and third Milesian king of Ireland, had to fight them again. And at many other times the Island suffered from their depredations.
     Names of a long list of kings, from Eremon downward, and important particulars regarding many of them, were preserved by the historical traditions--traditions that were as valuable, and as zealously guarded, as are the written State Records of modern days. 4  The carefully trained file', who was poet, historian, and philosopher, was consecrated to the work--and, ever inspired with the sacredness of his trust, he was seldom known to deviate from the truth in anything of importance--however much he confessedly gave his imagination play in the unimportant details.  And, much as the people reverenced him, they reverenced the truth of history more; and it was the law that a file', discovered falsifying, should be degraded and disgraced.
     The Scottish historian Pinkerton, who was hardly sympathetic admits: "Foreigners may imagine that it is granting too much to the Irish to allow them lists of kings more ancient than those of any other country of modern Europe.  but the singularly compact and remote situation of that Island, and the freedom from Roman conquest, and from the concussion of the Fall of the Roman Empire, may infer this allowance not too much."
     And the British Camden, another authority not partial to Ireland, but sometimes hostile, says:  "They deduced their history from memorials derived from the most profound depths of remote antiquity, so that compared with that of Ireland, the antiquities of all other nations is but novelty, and their history is but a kind of infancy."
     Standish O'Grady in his "Early Bardic History of Ireland" says:  "I
must confess that the blaze of Bardic light which illuminates those centuries a first dazzles the eye and disturbs the judgment...(but) that the Irish kings and heroes should succeed one another, and all those who were contemporaneous with them are seen clearly and distinctly, was natural in a country where in each little realm or sub-kingdom the ard-ollam was equal in dignity to the King, as is proved by the equivalence of their eric.  the dawn of English history is in the seventh century--a late dawn, dark and sombre, without a ray of cheerful sunshine; that of Ireland dates reliably from a point before the commencing of the Christian Era-illumined with that light which never was on sea or land--thronging with heroic forms of men and women--terrible with the presence of the supernatural and its over-reaching power."5

Breas fled to the Hebrides, to his father, Elatha, the chief of the Fomorians, where, collecting a mighty host of their sea-robbers, in as many ships as filled the sea from the Hebrides to Ireland, they swarmed into Eirinn--and gave battle to the De Danaan at Northern Moytura, in Sligo.  In this, their second great battle, the De Danann were again victorious.  They routed their enemy with fearful slaughter, and overthrew the Fomorian tyranny in the island

forever.  The famous Fomorian chief, Balor of the Evil Eye, whose headquarters was on

Tory Island, off the Northwest coast, was slain, by a stone from the sling of his own

grandson, the great De Danann hero, Lugh.  But Balor had slain King Nuada before he was

himself dispatched. This famous life and death struggle of two races is commemorated by a multitude of cairns and pillars which strew the great battle plain in Sligo--a plain which bears the name (in Irish) of "the Plain of the Towers of the Fomorians."
     The De Danann were now the undisputed masters of the land.   So goes the honored legend.

The Firbolgs' noted King, Eochaid, was slain in this great battle.  But the greatedst of their warriors, Sreng, had maimed the De Danann King, Nuada, cuting off his hand and by that stroke deposed him from the kingship.  Because,under the De Danann law (and ever after in Eirinn) no king could rule who suffered from a personal blemish. 
     The great warrior champion of the De Danann, Breas (whose father was a Formorian chief) filled the throne while Nuada went

into retirement, and had made for him a silver hand, by their chief artificer, Creidne'.
     Breas, says the legend, ruled for seven years.  He incensed his people by indulging his kin, the Fomorians, in their epredations. And he was finally deposed for this and for another cause that throws light upon one of the most noted characteristics of the poeple of Eire, ancient and modern.  Breas proved himself that meanest of all men, a kind ungenerous and inhospitable--lacking open heart and open hand--"The knives of his people" it was complained, "were not greased at his table, nor did their breath smell of ale, at a banquet.  Neither their poets, nor their bards, nor their satirists, nor their harpers, nor their pipers, nor their trumpeters, nor their jugglers, nor their buffoons, were ever seen engaged in amusing them in the assembly at his court."  So there

was mighty grumbling in the land, for that it should be disgraced by so unkingly a king.  And the grumbling swelled to a roar, when, in the extreme of his niggardliness, he committed the sin, pardonable in ancient Ireland, of insulting a poet.  Cairbre, the great poet of the time, him, was sent to a little bare, cold apartment, where a few,

mean, dry cakes upon a platter were put before him as substitute for the lavish royal banquet owed to a poet.  In hot indignation he quitted the abode of Breas, and upon the boorish king composed a withering satire, which should blight him and his seed forever.

Lashed to wrath, then, by the outrage on a poet's sacred person the frenzied people arose, drove the boor from the throne, and

from the Island--and Nuada Airgead Lam (of the Silver Hand) again reigned over his people.

Moreover,  they observed that their opponents had a superior kind of light spear: so time must be given to them to get like weapons made.  And they magnanimously pointed out to the Tuatha De Danann that, on the other hand, as they, the Firbolgs, had the advantage of possessing craisechs,  heavy spears that could

work great destruction, the De Danann needed to provide themselves with craisechs.  Anything and everything to stave

off the dread matching of courage and skill. Altogether they most

skilfully managed to keep the enemy fretting and fuming with

impatience for a hundred days and five before the great clash

resounded to the heavens. 
     But the De Danann gained an important point also.  For, as

the Firbolgs were possessed of overwhelming numbers, the strangers demanded that they eliminate their majority and fight on equal terms, man for man--which the laws of battle-justice

unfortunately compelled the reluctant Firbolgs to agree to. 
     The battle raged for four days. Then the Firbolgs, finding

themselves beaten,  but pretending not to know this, proposed that the doubtful struggle be ended by halting the great hosts and pitting against each other a body of 300 men from each side. So bravely had the losing ones fought, and so sorely exhausted the De Danann, that the latter, to end the struggle, were glad to

leave to the Firbolgs that quarter of the Island wherein they

fought., the province now called Connaught.  And the bloody contest was over.

4/7/2008:  Chapter 1 :  Early Colonisations:

     The Irish Race of to-day is popularly known as the Milesian Race, because the genuine Irish (Celtic) people were supposed to be descended from Milesius of Spain, whose sons, say the legendary accounts, invaded and possessed themselves of Ireland a thousand years before Christ.(1)

     But it is nearly as inaccurate to style the Irish people pure Milesian because the land was conquered and settled by the Milesians, as it would be to call them Anglo-Norman because it was conquered and settled by the twelfth century English.  The Races that occupied the land when the so-called Milesians came, chiefly the Firbolg and the Tuatha De Danann,(2) were certainly not exterminated by the conquering Milesians.  Those two peoples formed the basis of the future population, which was dominated and guided, and had its characteristics moulded, by the far less numerous but more powerful Milesian aristocracy and soldiery.
     All three of these races, however, were different tribes of the great Celtic family, who, long ages before, had separated from the main stem, and in course of later centuries blended again into one tribe of Gaels--three derivatives of one stream, which, after winding their several ways across Europe from the East, in Ireland turbulently met, and after eddying, and surging tumultuously, finall blended in amity, and flowed onward in one great Gaelic stream.
     Of these three certain colonisations of Ireland, the Firbolg was the first. Legend says they came from Greece, where they had been long enslaved, and whence they escaped in the captured ships of their masters.
     In their possession of Ireland the Firbolgs were disturbed by the descents and depredations of African sea-rovers, the Fomorians, who had a main stronghold on Tory Island, off the Northwest Coast.
     But the possession of the country was wrested from the Firbolgs, and they were forced into partial serfdom by the Tuatha De Danann (people of the goddess Dana), who arrived later. 
     Totally unlike the uncultured Firbolgs, the Tuatha De Danann were a capable and cultured, highly civilized people, so skilled in the crafts, if not the arts, that the Firbolgs named them necromancers; and in course of time both the Firbolgs and the later-coming Milesians created a mythology around these.
(send me an email if you want the 2 footnote passages sent to you-yormomalovesyou@care2.com)