THE MARRIAGES OF THE GODS AT THE SANCTUARY OF TAILLTIU
THOMAS JOHNSON WESTROPP.
When the gods of the Gaedhil invaded Ireland they are said to have found the Fir Bolg in possession and fought them to a finish. Though there can be no doubt that the Fir Bolg were a real tribe group, ill-defined, but, if one may use the term, “non-Milesian,” and some have even imagined that the Tuatha Dé Danann were also a human race (which is hard indeed to suppose possible),[1] it is evident that the story is of a war of gods, not a mere mortal struggle. That the new faith took over the older sanctuaries was only to be expected, and, in the case of the Celts, as of most polytheists, the line of least resistance was to try and reconcile their new-come gods with those of the soil. The sanctuary and assembly place of Tailltiu, at Oristown and Telltown, in Co. Meath, has preserved a most illuminating tradition, which it is well to study in some detail.
The pagan Irish had a pantheon formed of divergent and even discordant elements.[2] We have mountain deities like
- ↑ So many are actual gods outside of Ireland, with identical epithets and legends similar to what the Irish told of the Tuatha Dé. I use the conventional term “Milesian” for the fair race with red or yellow hair and blue or green eyes, as contrasted with the dark Ernai and Firbolg.
- ↑ Two races of gods divide the Síd mounds (Silva Gadelica, S. H. O’Grady, ii. p. 116; R.I.Acad. MS. Series, i. p. 46). We have Fomorian and Damnonian, gods like Bress; Cruthnian gods, like Etherun, at Tara; Ernean gods, like “Ailill Erann god of the diabul gaī” (New Ireland Review, xxvi. p. 133), or Deda (Proc. R.I.Acad, xxxiv. p. 159); animal gods like “Tore Triagh,”
