Celtic Mythology and Religion

106 CELTIC MYTHOLOGY AND RELIGION.
who weathered the flood in an ark of his own.
Fionntan,
when the flood began, was cast into a deep sleep,
which continued for a year, and when he woke he
found himself in his own house at Dun-Tulcha, in
Kerry somewhere (for O'Curry has not been able
exactly to localise this important event). He lived
here contemporaneously with the various dynasties
that ruled in
Ireland down to the time of Dermot
in the sixth century of our era. He then appears
for the last time, " with eighteen companies of his
descendants," in order to settle a boundary dispute,
since he was the oldest man in the world, and must
know all the facts. This story is not believed in
by the more pious of the historians, for it too flagrantly
contradicts the Scriptures. It, therefore,
falls under O'Curry's category of " "
wild stories ;
these are stories which contain some historic truth,
but are so overloaded with the fictions of the imagination
as to be nearly valueless. The Irish historians i
have as much horror of a blank in their history,
as nature was once supposed to have of a vacuum..
The Lady Caesair fills the blank before the flood
Partholan and his colony fill the first blank after
the flood. He came from Migdonia, the middle of
Greece, " twenty-two years before the birth of
Abraham," and was the ninth in descent from Noah,
all the intermediate names being duly given. He
was not in the island ten years when the Fomorians,
or sea-rovers, disturbed him. These Fomorians
were a constant source of trouble to all succeeding