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