Leabhar Gabhála
Irish title for the 12th-century text usually known in English as The Book of Invasions or Book of Conquests [lit. book of the taking of Ireland]. A collection of pseudo-historical texts by various authors of different periods, arranged in a pattern of invasions, the Lebor Gabála purports to synchronize myths, legends, and genealogies from early Ireland with the framework of biblical exegesis. In the words of Alwyn and Brinley Rees, it is ‘a laborious attempt to combine parts of the native teaching with Hebrew mythology embellished with medieval legend’. One modern commentator calls the Lebor Gabála a ‘masterpiece of muddled medieval miscellany’. Compilers of the Lebor Gabála do not demonstrate a profound knowledge of the Bible itself but rely instead on biblical commentators and historians, especially Eusebius (3rd cent. AD), Orosius (6th cent.), and Isidore of Seville (7th cent.). Informed by Latin learning, the surviving Irish text may have been based on a Latin original, an assertion now much disputed. Portions of the Irish text were contributed by a number of identifiable poets from the 9th and 10th centuries, the final compilation coming after the 11th century. Accepting biblical cosmology, the Lebor Gabála plays a role in the Irish Mythological Cycle comparable to that of Hesiod's Works and Days (6th cent. BC) in Greek mythology.
The text begins the story of human history with the biblical Flood, which commentators date at 2900 BC or in the supposed ‘year of the world’ 1104 Anno Mundi. Dates for different invasions vary widely in different texts, as medieval authorities never agreed on the date of Creation; the Venerable Bede (7th cent.) argued for 3952 BC and the Septuagint commentators (3rd cent. BC) determined 5200 BC, while later authorities opted for 4004 BC. The Scoti (i.e. Goidels, Irish) are assumed to have originated in Scythia but to have taken their name from Scota (1) or Scotia, the daughter of a Pharaoh. While in Egypt the Scoti know Moses and are invited to join the Exodus, a probable source of the longstanding canard that the Irish are a lost tribe of Israel. Fénius Farsaid is described as being present at the separation of languages at Babel and leaving instructions for his grandson, Goídel Glas, to forge the Irish languages out of the seventy-two tongues then in existence.
Modern readers have taken the greatest interest in iteration of the six mythological invasions (or seven, counting the Fomorians) of Ireland, which incorporate tantalizing elements of bona fide ethnic history, greatly transformed. Additionally, the Lebor Gabála borrows from literary texts and, at times, explains narratives in them. Sorting out the distinctions between invention and fact remains an ongoing task for scholars of early Ireland. The ordering of the invasions, and the character of the invaders, is fixed:
(I) Cesair, granddaughter of Noah, who was sent to Ireland to escape the Flood, accompanied by her father Bith, fifty women, and three men, who hoped vainly to populate the island. (II) Partholón and the Partholonians, descendants of the biblical Magog, arrived 312 years after the death of Cesair and settled eastern Irish plains before being wiped out in a plague. (III) Nemed and the Nemedians came from the Caspian Sea thirty years after the death of Partholón. After clearing twelve plains and forming four lakes, Nemed fought four battles with the Fomorians, winning three and losing the fourth, after which their remnants went into exile, some to return with later invasions. (IIIa) The Fomorians, not a part of the invasion sequence, but euhemerized deities who come to be portrayed as a dark and violent but magical race of pirates, whose home is Tory Island off the Donegal coast. They battle the Partholonians and the Nemedians before being defeated by the Tuatha Dé Danann.(IV) The Fir Bolg are short, dark people who came to Ireland fleeing oppression. Sometimes they are thought to be a second wave of Nemedians or survivors of their invasion. Defeated by the invading Tuatha Dé Danann, they settle on Aran and Rathlin Islands. (V) The Tuatha Dé Danann, gods of the pre-Christian Irish pantheon reduced to human stature, arrived thirty-seven years after the Fir Bolg, whom they subjugated. Their defeat of the Fomorians ushered in the luminous era in which many early Irish mythological narratives appear to be taking place. (VI) Míl Espáine and the Milesians are mortal ancestors of the modern Gaels. Although his name means ‘soldier of Spain’, Míl is a Scythian who marries Scota [Latin, Irishwoman] (1). His descendants leave Spain for Kerry 297 years after the arrival of the Tuatha Dé Danann, defeat their predecessors, and push on to found Tara. The Milesians still reign when the time-frame of Irish heroic literature ceases.
The first two invasions are the least grounded and most contrived of the seven. Many of the names in Cesair's retinue appear to have been invented to provide a gloss for place-names. Elements in her invasion are both erotic and comic. The three men of the company are charged with dividing fifty women among them and to populate the island. Two of the men die and Cesair's ‘husband’, Fintan mac Bóchra, feeling inadequate to the task, flees in the form of a salmon. The name Partholón is probably also an invention, as the letter P is unknown in earlier Irish; it appears to be an adaptation of Bartholomaeus, which Isidore of Seville and St Jerome glossed as ‘son of him who stays the waters’. Good colonists, the Partholonians cleared four plains, settling on Mag nElta [Moynalty], roughly coextensive with the modern city of Dublin, from Howth on the east to Tallaght in the south-west. The first battle on Irish soil pitted the Partholonians against the devilish Fomorians from the north. After introducing agriculture, the Partholonian colony swelled to 9,000 before all but one of them died in a plague. Only Tuan mac Cairill (sometimes mac Stairn) survived to the time of Colum Cille to tell of the invasions of Ireland.
Nemed and the Nemedians arriving thirty years after the Partholonians appear initially to be shadows of their predecessors, clearing land and forming lakes. As a people their greed for gold led them to disaster before they arrived in Ireland, when all but one of their thirty-four ships were lost in a vain pursuit of a tower of gold seen on the sea. This attack on a tower prefigures their brave but futile assault against the tower of the Fomorians on Tory Island (off Donegal). Before this the Nemedians had bested the hated Fomorians three times, but were none the less reduced to vassalage, paying a humiliating tribute. After being decimated by the Fomorians, remnants of the Nemedians scattered across the world, returning generations later as the mythical Fir Bolg and Tuatha Dé Danann as well as the historical British. Some commentators link the Nemedians with the historical Érainn.
Although not a wave of invaders themselves, the Fomorians [Irish Fomoire] appear often in the text of Lebor Gabála, usually as rapacious raiders upon other settlers. When the Partholonians first encounter them under Cichol, they are hideous, misshapen monsters with but one eye, one arm, and one leg, but elsewhere they are more anthropomorphic. Their portrait in another important early Irish text, Cath Maige Tuired [The (Second) Battle of Mag Tuired], has them intermarrying with the Tuatha Dé Danann, the race of gods. Modern commentators believe they are euhemerized pagan deities, possibly marine counterparts of the Tuatha Dé Danann, whose characterization was heavily influenced by early sea marauders, first from the Scottish Isles and more substantially the Norse. Often they appear to be demonic but magical pirates, given to gratuitous cruelty. For unexplained reasons they do not prey upon the agricultural Fir Bolg, causing some earlier commentators to think the two groups identical, an assertion now rejected. Their climactic moment comes in Cath Maige Tuired, whose action is summarized in Lebor Gabála. After Bres, who is part Fomorian, part Tuatha Dé Danann, makes an unsuitable successor to Nuadu Airgetlám, king of the Tuatha Dé Danann, a great battle ensues between the two people. Lug Lámfhota, the Tuatha Dé Danann champion, puts his slingstone through the magical eye of Balor, thus turning his power against Balor's fellow warriors, disabling many of them. The Fomorians are subsequently routed and do not make trouble in Ireland again.
Perceptions of the Fir Bolg have changed as modern readers abandoned older, more fanciful interpretations of their name, e.g. ‘men of bags’ [cf. Irish bolg, bag, sack], in favour of the view that their invasion is mythologized from the possible movements of such peoples as the Érainn, the Domnainn, and the Lagin, who may have come from the Continent and Great Britain. The Fir Bolg are supposed to have introduced iron-tipped weapons and also to have established an era of peace and prosperity, especially under their king Eochaid mac Eirc, whose reign induced harvests every year and established the rule of law. After thirty-seven years the Tuatha Dé Danann, a race of gods, invaded and defeated the Fir Bolg at the first Battle of Mag Tuired, near Lough Arrow, Co. Sligo; see CATH MAIGE TUIRED. Thus subdued, the Fir Bolg fled to distant corners of the Gaelic world such as the Scottish coast, Rathlin Island, and the Aran Islands. In folkloric memory they are grotesque, dark helots and cave fairies, a perception partially coordinate with the misinterpretation of their name as ‘men of bags’.
The divine origins of the Tuatha Dé Danann are implicit in the usual story of their arrival in Ireland, descending from a dark cloud on a mountain in the west, instead of by ship as other invaders had. Their very name, ‘people of the goddess Danu/ Ana’, may have been invented in the Lebor Gabála, but the phrase Tuatha Dé was earlier used to describe the old gods or to denote the Israelites in translations of the Bible. The complete origin of the name and the precise implications of it are still disputed. Unquestionably many members of the Tuatha Dé Danann pre-date the composition of the Lebor Gabála, having been the gods of pre-Christian cults. But from the Lebor Gabála onward they are portrayed as humans, if extraordinary ones. They excel all peoples of the earth in their proficiency in every art. After their defeat of the Fir Bolg at the First Battle of Mag Tuired, their only enemies are the Fomorians, also euhemerized deities. After the unhappy succession of the part Fomorian Bres to the throne of Nuadu Airgetlám, the Tuatha Dé Danann decisively defeat the Fomorians at the epic Second Battle of Mag Tuired. The era that follows is the time when most of the action of the Mythological Cycle takes place. Leading figures include: the Dagda, the ‘good god’, a king who specializes in druidical magic; Angus Óg, the god of poetry; Lug Lámfhota, not only an important champion but a master of arts and crafts; Dian Cécht, the principal healing god; Brigid, the firegoddess; Boand, the goddess of the Boyne who is also wife to the Dagda; Ogma, a god of eloquence who is also a strongman and warrior; and the triad of war goddesses, Badb, Macha, and Mórrígan. This happy reign comes to an end with the invasion of the mortal Milesians, who defeat the Tuatha Dé Danann in two battles, Tailtiu and Druim Ligen. Although the Lebor Gabála does not describe the Tuatha Dé Danann in defeat, popular sources from the 12th century on portray them as living in the world of the Milesians and their progeny, but unseen by them through the power of féth fíada. Mortals live above the earth while the immortal Tuatha Dé Danann live first in cairns and barrows, later beneath the earth. The route to the realm of the immortal Tuatha Dé Danann is the sídh. Any humans entering the world of the Tuatha Dé Danann encounter enchanted idylls such as Mag Mell [Pleasant Plain], Emain Ablach [Fortress of Apples], and, best known of all, Tír na nÓg [the Land of Youth]. In time the underground Tuatha Dé Danann became identical with the fairies.
Narratives of the Milesians are discontinuous, those dealing with their origins in Scythia and biblical lands highly contrived and fanciful, and those of their invasion echoing the coming of the Q-Celtic Goidels. The Milesians invent the Irish language; their early leader Fénius Farsaid was present at Babel, gleaning the best from all existing tongues, and his grandson Goídel put Fénius' knowledge into practice. Moses himself assured the Milesians that they would live in a land free of snakes. Memory of the druid Caicer's prophecy that they would live in Ireland haunted the Milesians, and Míl Espáine led his people from Egypt towards their promised land but was killed in Spain while aiding his kinsmen there. He gave his name to his people through his many sons, some of them from his second wife, Scota (1), the daughter of the Pharaoh. One son, Íth, after climbing Breogan's tower in Brigantia [La Caruña, Spain], sees Ireland one cold night and resolves to go there; when he does, and is killed, eight sons of Míl vow revenge. They land at Inber Scéne and win a swift victory over the Tuatha Dé Danann at Sliab Mis before meeting three goddesses, Banba, Ériu, and Fódla, each of whom asked that Ireland be named for her. Three kings of the Tuatha Dé at Tara, Mac Cuill, Mac Cécht, and Mac Gréine, possibly husbands of the goddesses, promise to turn over the country to the invaders if only the latter will keep nine waves from shore for three days. It is a trick, and two sons of Míl are drowned, the others sailing sunwise to the Boyne estuary, where they land at Inber Colptha, named for Colptha, a surviving son. The Milesians then crush the Tuatha Dé Danann in two battles, Tailtiu [Teltown, Co. Meath] and Druim Ligen, and spread their power over all of Ireland. Because Míl Espáine's widow, Scota (1), accompanies the invaders, they come to be known as the Scotti or Scoti, which is indeed the Latin name for the Gaelic-speaking Irishmen as well as those Gaels who settled in what is now Scotland. Míl's son Amairgin (1) becomes a leading poet, and two others, Éremón and Éber, divide Ireland between them. In the first century of their rule a rebellion of the Aitheachthuatha [plebeian races] sets up the disastrous interregnum of usurper Cairbre Cinn-Chait; after his death Cairbre's son Morann returns the kingship to the rightful heirs. Although the Milesians are not mentioned prominently in Ulster or Connacht records, most Irish aristocratic families claimed descent from Míl Espáine.
Although the oldest surviving text of Lebor Gabála is in the 12th-century Book of Leinster, we have abundant evidence that the full text grew over many centuries and was added to by many hands. Summaries of Lebor Gabála narratives appear in the Historia Brittonum (formerly attributed to Nennius). The Scottish chronicler John Fordun (d. 1384) drew from Lebor Gabála in his five-volume Chronica gentis Scotorum [Chronicle of the Scottish People], often interpolating passages of shameless chauvinism. Some of the most important Irish historians before modern times struggled to make the Lebor Gabála history fit with information gathered elsewhere, including Geoffrey Keating (c.1570–c.1645), Micheál Ó Cléirigh (1575–c.1645) of the Annals of the Four Masters, and Roderick O'Flaherty (1629–1718). As late as the 18th century a historian as conscientious as Charles O'Conor (1710–91) was trying to accommodate the Lebor Gabála to post-Enlightenment times.
Although themes and characters from Lebor Gabála appear often in literature written by non-Gaelic authors (James Joyce employs many in Finnegans Wake, 1939), the pedestrian prose and digressive narratives have discouraged English or other adaptations. Two exceptions are Charles Maturin's little-read The Milesian Chief (London, 1812) and Jim Fitzpatrick's adult comic book, The Book of Conquests (London, 1978). The success of the Fitzpatrick book inspired the short-lived amusement attraction ultimately based on the Lebor Gabála called CeltWorld, in Tramore, Co. Waterford, in the 1990s.
The fullest text, edited and translated by R. A. S. Macalister, has been widely criticized: Lebor Gabála Érenn, 5 vols., Irish Texts Society, Nos. 34, 35, 39, 41, 44 (Dublin, 1938–56); repr. Irish Text Society (London, 1993), with a new introduction by John Carey. See also Myles Dillon, ‘Lebor Gabála Érenn’, Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, 86 (1956), 62–72; Vernam E. Hull, ‘The Milesian Invasion of Ireland’, Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie, 19 (1932), 155–60; Liam Ó Buachalla, ‘The Lebor Gabála or Book of Invasions of Ireland: Notes on Its Construction’, Journal of the Cork Historical and Archaeological Society, 67 (1962), 70–9; Alwyn and Brinley Rees, Celtic Heritage (London, 1961), esp. ch. 4, pp. 95–117; R. Mark Scowcroft, ‘Leabhar Gabhála, I: The Growth of the Text’, Ériu, 38 (1987), 81–142; Anton van Hamel, ‘On Lebor Gabála’, Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie, 10 (1914), 97–197.
