Irish Druids and Old Irish Religions

I02 Old Irish Relio-ions
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deal with the dark aborigines, known as the Firbolgs,
and are said to have slain 100,000 at the battle of Magh-
Tuireadh Conga.
Driven off the island by their foes, they
travelled in the East, returning from their exile as finished
magicians and genuine Druids.
Mr. Gladstone, \x\ Juvenilis
Miuidi^ contends that Danaan is of Phoenician extraction,
that a district near Tripoli, of Syria, is known as Dannie.
He adds, " Pausanias says that at the landing-place of
Danaos, on the Argive coast, was a temple of Poseidon
Genesios, of Phoenician origin."
After reigning in
Ireland two hundred years, the Tuatha
were, it is narrated, invaded by the children of Gail Glas,
who had come from Egypt to Spain, and sailed thence to
Erin under Milesius, the leader of the Milesians. When
their fleet was observed, the Danaans caused a Druidic fog
to arise, so that the land assumed the shape of a black pig,
whence arose another name for Ireland— " litis na illiiic, or
Isle of the Pig." The Milesians, however, employed their
enchantments in return, and defeated the Tuatha at Tailteine,
now Teltown, on the Blackwater, and at Druim-
Lighean, now Drumleene, Donegal.
The Tuatha have been improperly confounded with the
Danes. Others give them a German origin, or a Nemedian
one. Wilde describes them as large and fair-complexioned,
carrying long, bronze, leaf-shaped swords, of a Grecian
style, and he thinks them the builders of the so-called
Danish forts, duns, or cashels, but not of the
stone circles.
McFirbis, 200 years ago, wrote— " Every one who is
fair-haired, revengeful, large, and every plunderer, professors
of musical and entertaining
performances, who are
adepts of druidical and magical arts, they are the descendants
of the Tuatha-de-Danaans."
"The Danans," O'Flanagan wrote in 1808, "are said to
have been well acquainted with Athens ;
and the memory