Myths and Legends of the Celtic Race - Knowledge Rush

78 Myths and Legends of the Celtic Race[97]the God of the Dead. Partholan is said to have come into Irelandfrom the West, where beyond the vast, unsailed Atlantic Oceanthe Irish Fairyland, the Land of the Living—i.e., the land ofthe Happy Dead— was placed. His father's name was Sera (?the West). He came with his queen Dalny 74 and a number ofcompanions of both sexes. Ireland—and this is an imaginativetouch intended to suggest extreme antiquity—was then a differentcountry, physically, from what it is now. There were then butthree lakes in Ireland, nine rivers, and only one plain. Otherswere added gradually during the reign of the Partholanians. One,Lake Rury, was said to have burst out as a grave was being dugfor Rury, son of Partholan.The FomoriansThe Partholanians, it is said, had to do battle with a strangerace, called the Fomorians, of whom we shall hear much in latersections of this book. They were a huge, misshapen, violentand cruel people, representing, we may believe, the powers ofevil. One of these was surnamed Cenchos, which means TheFootless, and thus appears to be related to Vitra, the God ofEvil in Vedantic mythology, who had neither feet nor hands.With a host of these demons Partholan fought for the lordship ofIreland, and drove them out to the northern seas, whence theyoccasionally harried the country under its later rulers.The end of the race of Partholan was that they were afflictedby pestilence, and having gathered together on the Old Plain(Senmag) for convenience of burying their dead, they all perishedthere; and Ireland once more lay empty for reoccupation.The Legend of Tuan mac CarellWho, then, told the tale? This brings us to the mention ofa very curious and interesting legend—one of the numerouslegendary narratives in which these tales of the Mythical Periodhave come down to us. It is found in the so-called “Book of the74 Dealgnaid. I have been obliged here, as occasionally elsewhere, to modifythe Irish names so as to make them pronounceable by English readers.