Their last King was Mac-grene, which bears a verbal relation to the Sun. There is a strong suspicion of their connection with the old idolatry. The author of Old Celtic Romances writes-"By the Milesians and their descendants they were regarded as gods, and ultimately, in the imagination of the people, they became what are now in Ireland called 'Fairies.'" They conquered the Firbolgs, an Iberian or a Belgic people, at the battle of Moytura.
Duffy, "fancifully attributed to each of the Tuath-de-Danaan chiefs some particular art or department over which they held him to preside " as, Abhortach, to music. Arthur Clive declares that civilization came in with an earlier race than the Celts, and retired with their conquest by the latter.
Atkinson supposes, "must be the highly intellectual race that imported into Ireland our Oghams, round towers, architecture, metal work, and, above all, the exquisite art which has come down to us in our wonderful illuminated Irish MSS." The polished Tuatha were certainly contrasted with the rude Celts. "The Danans," O'Flanagan wrote in 1808, "are said to have been well acquainted with Athens and the memory of their kings, poets, and poetesses, or female philosophers, of highest repute for wisdom and learning, is still preserved with reverential regret in some of our old manuscripts of the best authority." Referring to these persons, as Kings Dagad, Agamon and Dalboeth, to Brig, daughter of Dagda, to Edina and Danana, he exclaimed, "Such are the lights that burst through the gloom of ages." The Tuatha, G. 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." 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. Others give them a German origin, or a Nemedian one. The Tuatha have been improperly confounded with the Danes. 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-"Inis na illuic, 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. Gladstone, in Juventus Mundi, 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."Īfter 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. Driven off the island by their foes, they travelled in the East, returning from their exile as finished magicians and genuine Druids. In their invasion of Ireland, Tuaths had to deal with the dark aborigines, known as the Firbolgs, and are said to have slain 100,000 at the battle of Magh-Tuireadh Conga. He credulous Four Masters have wonderful tales of Tuath doings.