Myths and Legends of the Celtic Race - Knowledge Rush

114 Myths and Legends of the Celtic Race[138]of the Firbolgs with the light and penetrating spears of the Peopleof Dana is an indication which it is impossible to mistake. Again,in their struggle with a far more powerful and dangerous enemy,the Fomorians, we are evidently to see the combat of the powersof Light with evil of a more positive kind than that representedby the Firbolgs. The Fomorians stand not for mere dulness orstupidity, but for the forces of tyranny, cruelty, and greed—formoral rather than for intellectual darkness.The Meaning of the Milesian MythBut the myth of the struggle of the Danaans with the sonsof Miled is more difficult to interpret. How does it come thatthe lords of light and beauty, wielding all the powers of thought(represented by magic and sorcery), succumbed to a human race,and were dispossessed by them of their hard-won inheritance?What is the meaning of this shrinking of their powers whichat once took place when the Milesians came on the scene?The Milesians were not on the side of the powers of darkness.They were guided by Amergin, a clear embodiment of the ideaof poetry and thought. They were regarded with the utmostveneration, and the dominant families of Ireland all traced theirdescent to them. Was the Kingdom of Light, then, divided againstitself? Or, if not, to what conception in the Irish mind are we totrace the myth of the Milesian invasion and victory?The only answer I can see to this puzzling question is tosuppose that the Milesian myth originated at a much later timethan the others, and was, in its main features, the product ofChristian influences. The People of Dana were in possession ofthe country, but they were pagan divinities—they could not standfor the progenitors of a Christian Ireland. They had somehow orother to be got rid of, and a race of less embarrassing antecedentssubstituted for them. So the Milesians were fetched from “Spain”and endowed with the main characteristics, only more humanised,of the People of Dana. But the latter, in contradistinction to theusual attitude of early Christianity, are treated very tenderly in the