ke fiery flying serpents. These are the
Tuatha De Danan [Note: A mystery still hangs over this three-formed
name. The full expression, Tuatha De Danan, is that generally employed,
less frequently Tuatha De, and sometimes, but not often, Tuatha. Tuatha
also means people. In mediaeval times the name lost its sublime meaning,
and came to mean merely "fairy," no greater significance, indeed,
attaching to the invisible people of the island after Christianity had
destroyed their godhood.], fairy princes, Tuatha; gods, De; of Dana,
Danan, otherwise Ana and the Moreega, or great queen; mater [Note:
Cormac's Glossary] deorum Hibernensium--"well she used to cherish [Note:
Scholiast noting same Glossary.] the gods." Limitless, this divine
population, dwelling in all the seas and estuaries, river and lakes,
mountains and fairy dells, in that enchanted Erin which was theirs.

But they have not started into existence suddenly, like the gods of
Rome, nor is their genealogy confined to a single generation like those
of Greece. Behind them extends a long line of ancestors, and a history
reaching into the remotest depths of the past. As the Greek gods
dethroned the Titans, so the Irish gods drove out or subjected the
giants of the Fir-bolgs; but in the Irish mythology, we find both gods
and giants descended from other ancient races of deities, called the
Clanna Nemedh and the Fomoroh, and these a branch of a divine cycle; yet
more ancient the race of Partholan, while Partholan himself is not the
eldest.

The history of the Italian gods is completely lost. For all that the
early Roman literature tells us of their origin, they may have been
either self-created or eternal. Rome was a seedling shaken from some
old perished civilisation. The Romans created their own empire, but they
inherited their gods. They supply no example of an Aryan nation evolving
its own mythology and religion. Regal Rome, as we know from Niebuhr, was
not the root from which our Rome sprang, but an old imperial city, from
whose ashes sprang that Rome we all know so well. The mythology of the
Latin writers came to them full-grown.

The gods of Greece were a creation of the Greek mind, indeed; but of
their ancestry, i.e., of their development from more ancient divine
tribes, we know little. Like Pallas, they all but start into existence
suddenly full-grown. Between the huge physical entities of the Greek
theogonists and the Olympian gods, there intervenes but a single