of
their corn and milk and of the children born during the year. If the
Fomorians are gods of darkness, or, preferably, aboriginal deities, the
tribute must be explained as a dim memory of sacrifice offered at the
beginning of winter when the powers of darkness and blight are in the
ascendant. The Fomorians had a tower of glass in Tory Island. This was
one day seen by the Milesians, to whom appeared on its battlements what
seemed to be men. A year after they attacked the tower and were
overwhelmed in the sea.[162] From the survivors of a previously wrecked
vessel of their fleet are descended the Irish. Another version makes the
Nemedians the assailants. Thirty of them survived their defeat, some of
them going to Scotland or Man (the Britons), some to Greece (to return
as the Firbolgs), some to the north, where they learned magic and
returned as the Tuatha De Danann.[163] The Firbolgs, "men of bags,"
resenting their ignominious treatment by the Greeks, escaped to Ireland.
They included the Firbolgs proper, the Fir-Domnann, and the
Galioin.[164] The Fomorians are called their gods, and this, with the
contemptuous epithets bestowed on them, may point to the fact that the
Firbolgs were the pre-Celtic folk of Ireland and the Fomorians their
divinities, hostile to the gods of the Celts or regarded as dark
deities. The Firbolgs are vassals of Ailill and Medb, and with the Fir
Domnann and Galioin are hostile to Cuchulainn and his men,[165] just as
Fomorians were to the Tuatha De Danann. The strifes of races and of
their gods are inextricably confused.

The Tuatha De Danann arrived from heaven--an idea in keeping with their
character as beneficent gods, but later legend told how they came from
the north. They reached Ireland on Beltane, shrouded in a magic mist,
and finally, after one or, in other accounts, two battles, defeated the
Firbolgs and Fomorians at Magtured. The older story of one battle may be
regarded as a euhemerised account of the seeming conflict of nature
powers.[166] The first battle is described in a fifteenth to sixteenth
century MS.,[167] and is referred to in a fifteenth century account of
the second battle, full of archaic reminiscences, and composed from
various earlier documents.[168] The Firbolgs, defeated in the first
battle, join the Fomorians, after great losses. Meanwhile Nuada, leader
of the Tuatha De Danann, lost his hand, and as no king with a blemish
could sit on the throne, the crown was given