THE BENEATHERS: The Fomoire as a Cultural Baseline to Formulate Irish Identity in the

Lebor Gabála

David Morledge University of Arkansas

1

The Irish, the self-proclaimed Míl Espáine, or the “men of Spain,” are the sixth in a line of invaders and conquerors of according to the literary tradition of the Lebor Gabála, the

“Book of Invasions.” 1 Describing the academy’s current critical edition of Lebor Gabála, such as it is, as an edition may be something of a misnomer. Though valiant, R.A. Stewart

MacAlister’s work, spread across three decades and five separate volumes, is disjointed and incomplete.2 It is, however, the best available. I cite it here for the sake of unity. Moreover, it is not contained in one singular volume. With MacAlister’s editions in mind, the text, if that word is indeed applicable, is not a singular text per se but something more transcendent. According to

R.A.S. MacAlister, “every monastery of note possessed a copy which the monks constantly emended.3 Less a singular text and more of a textual tradition, the Lebor Gabála is loosely patterned from St. Augustine’s Sex Ætates Mundi and Isidore’s Etymologiae though the tradition describes only the story of Ireland and the peoples who invade and conquer her.4 It is structured in six epochs as is Sex Ætates Mundi. The Lebor Gabála functions as a Derridean recentering against an Other, the Fomoire, as a means to establish an Irish identity that is filled with military, political, and geological prowess. This paper seeks to offer a beginning overview of the general

1 See R.A. Stewart MacAlister, ed., Lebor Gabála Érenn: The Book of the Taking of Ireland, vol. 1, 5 vols. (Dublin: Educational Company of Ireland, Ltd., 1938). See also R.A. Stewart MacAlister, ed., Lebor Gabála Érenn: The Book of the Taking of Ireland, vol. 2, 5 vols. (Dublin: Educational Company of Ireland, Ltd., 1939). See also R.A. Stewart MacAlister, ed., Lebor Gabála Érenn: The Book of the Taking of Ireland, vol. 3, 5 vols. (Dublin: Educational Company of Ireland, Ltd., 1940). See also R.A. Stewart MacAlister, Lebor Gabála Érenn: The Book of the Taking of Ireland, vol. 4, 5 vols. (Dublin: Educational Company of Ireland, Ltd., 1941). Finally, see R.A. Stewart MacAlister, Lebor Gabála Érenn: The Book of the Taking or Ireland, vol. 5, 5 vols. (Dublin: Educational Company of Ireland, Ltd., 1956). 2 See R. Mark Scowcroft, “Leabhar Gabhála Part I: The Growth of the Text,” Ãriu 38 (1987): 81–142 and R. Mark Scowcroft, “Leabhar Gabhála Part II: The Growth of the Tradition,” Ãriu 39 (1988): 1–66, who I briefly address later, for a thorough treatment of MacAlister's editions of the Lebor Gabála. 3 John Carey, “A New Introduction to the Lebor Gabála Érenn, the Book of the Taking of Ireland, Edited and Translated by R.A. Stewart MacAlister,” in Lebor Gabála Érenn, ed. R.A. Stewart MacAlister, Irish Texts Society Subsidiary Series 1 (Dublin: CRM Design + Print Limited, 2006), 21. 4 Augustine of Hippo, “On Catechism of the Uninterested,” in On the Holy Trinity, Doctrinal Treatise, Moral Treatises, ed. Philip Schaff, trans. S.D.F. Salmond, vol. 3, The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers (New York: Christian Literature Company, 1893), 605–7. Isidore of Seville, The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville, trans. Stephen A. Barney et al. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010). For arguments linking Isidore to the Lebor Gabála, see Rolf Baumgarten, “A Hiberno-Isisdorian Etymology,” Peritia 2 (1983): 225–28. 2 pseudohistorical trends of the text to both preface and invite further study and critique within the lens defined here.

Perhaps most striking about the Lebor Gabála is its pseudohistorical nature, a term I borrow from John Carey in a 1995 essay.5 Though Ireland does suffer from Pictish pirates in the early medieval era, Norse raiders from the eighth to the eleventh centuries, and a continued

Hiberno-Norse presence in places such as Dublin and Ossory, there are no true cultural, linguistic, or political interruptions in the way the island of Britain experiences just to the east.6

The island remains, mainly, Irish—culturally, linguistically, and politically. Yet, the Lebor

Gabála manufactures a series of these interruptions in its pseudohistorical account in order to define a cultural identity. What is most striking is the presence of an Other who interacts with each of the invading peoples: the Fomoire.

The Fomoire are not confined to only the Lebor Gabála. They appear throughout the medieval Irish corpus, such as Tochmarc Étaíne, and in addition to the centrally considered text here, the Lebor Gabála, evoking a question: are they another cultural and another language group that was present on the island with the Irish?7 Alternatively, were the Fomoire created by the Irish literati to create a textual space for a real, physical need on the island. Some investigation of the timeline of all three Irish texts at hand; Tochmarc Étaíne, Cath

Maige Tuired, and Lebor Gabála; could prove useful to establish a framework.8 Many scholars;

O’Rahilly, Carey, MacAlister, Scowcroft and others; argue the Lebor Gabála traces its origins to

5 John Carey, “Native Elements in Irish Pseudohistory,” in Cultural Identity and Cultural Integration: Ireland and Europe in the Early Middle Ages (Portland, Oregon: Four Courts Press, 1995), 45–60. 6 For a thorough historical and archeological analysis of exactly when and where the Hiberno-Norse peoples were on the island, see the recent collection of published essays Howard B. Clarke and Ruth Johnson, eds., The Vikings in Ireland and Beyond: Before and after the Battle of Clontarf, Pathways to Our Past (Dublin, Ireland: Four Courts Press, 2015). 7 See Osborn Bergin and R.I. Best, “Tochmarc Étaíne,” Ériu 12 (1938): 137–96. 8 Elizabeth A. Gray, “Cath Maige Tuired: Myth and Structure,” Éigse 19 (1982): 1–35. 3 as early as the seventh century.9 Gray places Cath Maige Tuired’s origins before that, she argues the sixth century, finding echoes, originally from Cath Maige Tuired, within the Lebor Gabála.10

Tochmarc Étaíne is dated to either the eighth or ninth centuries by MacKillop.11

Tochmarc Étaíne appears last in the framework, with the Lebor Gabála as a tradition beginning between it and Cath Maige Tuired. All but Tochmarc Étaíne have origins before archeological evidence of the longphuirt of the Norse presence in Dublin, Ossory and other places.12 Amid the sixth century origins of this framework, there is no space for the Fomoire to signify an actual cultural, political, or language group on the island. Certainly, all three texts are well established long before 1014 and the Battle of Clontarf. Though, the Acallam na Senórach, the Fenian cycle, dated to roughly the twelfth century by Cana and others, may ascribe an

Othered presence and role to the Norse by equating them to the Fomoire and the Otherworld in the Fenian cycle, none of the texts at hand can, at their origins, be considered to have a physically proven, extant Other cultural or linguistic people at their center. 13 In the three texts, the Fomoire are not Norse, not Vikings, not Picts, and not raiders from another island.14 They

9 O’Rahilly’s book is indispensable for any significant study of the Irish and serves as a foundation for scholarship surrounding it. See Thomas F. O’Rahilly, Early Irish History and Mythology (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1957). See Carey, “A New Introduction to the Lebor Gabála Érenn, the Book of the Taking of Ireland, Edited and Translated by R.A. Stewart MacAlister.” See Lebor Gabála Érenn, ed. and transl. R.A.S. MacAlister, 5 vols (Dublin 1932-56). See also both Scowcroft, “Leabhar Gabhála Part I: The Growth of the Text.” and Scowcroft, “Leabhar Gabhála Part II: The Growth of the Tradition.” 10 Gray, “Cath Maige Tuired: Myth and Structure.” 11 See Elizabeth A Gray, Cath Maige Tuired: The Second Battle of Mag Tuired (London: Irish texts Society, 1998). See also James MacKillop, Dictionary of (Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press, 1998): 359-61. 12 Clarke and Johnson, The Vikings in Ireland and Beyond. 13 Cana and other members of the first International Congress of Celtic Studies thoroughly examine and discuss the influence of the Hiberno-Norse and other Nordic peoples on the medieval Irish literary tradition. See P. Mac Cana, “The Influence of Vikings on Celtic Literature,” in The Impact of the Scandinavian Invasions on the Celtic-Speaking Peoples c.800-1100 A.D. : Introductory Papers Read at Plenary Sessions of the International Congress of Celtic Studies, Held in Dublin, 6-10 July, 1959 /: The Influence of Vikings on Celtic Literature (International Congress of Celtic Studies, Dublin, 1959), 78–118. For a current critical edition, complete with arguments on its dating, see Ann Dooley and Harry Roe, eds., Tales of the Elders of Ireland: Acallam Na Senórach, Oxford World’s Classics (Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press, 2008). 14 For a thorough investigation of some of those raiding peoples, see Alex Woolf, From Pictland to Alba, 789 - 1070, New Edinburgh History of Scotland, v. 2 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007). 4 are a textual invention created to serve a purpose for the Mil Espáine and other “Irish” conquering groups introduced in the various invasions the textual tradition of the Lebor Gabála and others use to build towards a final Irish victory and solidify, legitimize, and glorify the Irish people, if such a unified term may be applied to the disparate groups on the island who shared, at the least, a language.15

How then, are we to read the Fomoire within the manuscript corpus of the Lebor Gabála?

I contend that the Fomoire are a Derridean re-centering to establish an axis around which a people might define themselves, their identity, and the land which they occupy, the Other against which the Irish define and redefine themselves in the discourse of Tochmarc Étaíne, Cath Maige

Tuired, and the Lebor Gabála.16 By centering the discourse of Irish cultural identity throughout a corpus of texts—Tochmarc Étaíne, Cath Maige Tuired, and the Lebor Gabála—the Fomoire become the locus, the center, of the cultural conversation occurring across time and place in

Ireland. The forms of Irish identity within the pages are centered on a discussion, via definition against, the Othered Fomoire. These Others become a cultural baseline within the Lebor

Gabála, literally and figuratively resting beneath the Irish, a new chthonic center to consistently fight and to consistently overtop, furthering their subterranean nature and provide a recurring place to begin the process again for the next epoch of the culture groups of the Lebor Gabála.

Though an example in negativity, what not to do and how not to act, they are a textual motif and tradition upon which the idea of Ireland itself is built. Each people build their place in Ireland

15 Clarke and Johnson, The Vikings in Ireland and Beyond. No singular, true Irish king occurs until Boruma in Meath, who dies at Clontarf in 1014. 16 Jacques Derrida, “Structure, Sing, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences,” in Writing and Difference, ed. Alan Bass, Reprint, Routledge Classics (London: Routledge, 2009). 5 atop the “beneathers” and carve their dominance onto the land as they write it onto the vellum of the text.17

For example, if the Fomoire are some manifestation or anthropomorphization of the land or sea, and its constituent Otherworld, then the wizards of the Tuatha de Danaan’s ability to turn the land, particularly the lakes and rivers, against them in Cath Maige Tuired is the Irish answer to the Other of both another potential tribe or people, but also to the land itself by asserting their dominance and control over it, assuring their rightful place in their home and their sovereignty over the Isle.18 There seems nothing positive offered by, nor contributions from, the race of monstrous “beneathers.” They add nothing to the island other than a necessary entity to be defeated to establish the current rulership of the island, something to start the Lebor Gabála for its heroes and ages. They seem to always be present, if beneath or around the edges of the text and Ireland’s current people, but they do not contribute to any land-shaping events, just as they fail at warfare and politics.

Consider the etymology to support ideas of physical locations beneath, above, and outside. The word “Fomoire,” according to John Carey, can be isolated into two discernible constituent elements. The first, “fo-,” is certainly the Irish preposition for beneath. The second portion, “moir” or “mor,” is a bit more elusive, likely translating as either “giant” or “sea.” 19

Gray certainly appears to agree.20 Either combination yields an Other relegated to a cognitive, cultural, and physical space beneath either the earth or beneath the waves—away from the Irish

17 Many of my ideas surrounding the concept I posit here of the Fomoire as “beneathers” comes from the informative article by Carey, “Native Elements in Irish Pseudohistory.” The “beneathers” is a term I coin here and is not a borrowing from scholars such as Carey or Gray. 18 Gray, “Cath Maige Tuired: Myth and Structure.” p.18. n. 40. 19 I quote almost directly from Carey’s entry in a larger and recently published Irish, Scottish, and Welsh medieval lore and mythology. See John Carey, “Fomoiri,” in The Celts: History, Life, and Culture, ed. John T. Koch and Antone Minard, vol. 1, 2 vols. (Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO, 2012), 355. 20 Gray, “Cath Maige Tuired: Myth and Structure.” 6 as a way of definition of the Irish. The Fomoire are defeated, physically and metaphorically topped, and finally driven beneath the sea’s waves, just as were the immoral descendants of Cain during the biblical deluge. These borrowings of authority further a reading for the listed invaders that is not only Irish, but also derived from the pious sources of the Christian bible’s Genesis and from Augustine, ascendant and nearing the divine, lending a typographical form of Irish identity and authority to the Lebor Gabála by aligning it not only with Sex Ætates Mundi, but also with

Genesis. The metaphorical, typological reading of Genesis as practice would follow perfectly as a means of establishing authority within the interface with the pseudohistorical Lebor Gabála.

The Fomoire provide a number of negative examples against which the Irish define themselves. The Fomoirian ideas of governance and family are either inept or corrupt. 21 Gray analyzes the inept Fomorian governance from Cath Maige Tuired with the following phrase:

“’s failures as a king are inextricably bound up with his Fomorian kinship and his personal relationship with his father; and by contrasting Bres and …with two other fathers and sons

( and Mac Óc, Dían Cécht and Míach)…the tale further develops a definition of the ideal paternal and filial relationships in early Irish society.”22 The Fomoire bring chaos. They fail at familial relationships and government. They deconstruct. The Mil Espáine, the Tuatha dé

Danaan, and the all construct. The three “Irish” cultural groups signify and manifest order. In following the theme of land shaping events, the Fomoire are beaten by Ireland, the land itself. The land, and the sea, and the order placed upon the Fomoire by the Irish groups who both physically and metaphorically overtop the “beneathers” are representations and actors that manifest a position of superiority just as the manifest and signify Irishness in that superior

21 Ibid. Gray concisely sums the argument with “The victory of the Túatha dé Danaan is the triumph of a well- ordered society over one [the Fomoire] that practices…various forms of social chaos (tyrannous kingship, inhospitality, [and] disrespect for the rights of the áes dána…).” p. 35. 22 Ibid. p. 1. 7 p[position. The sea swallows their castle with the tide in the final victory of the Tuatha dé

Danaan in Cath Maige Tuired. The Fomoire can never ascend to the Irish ideal of governance set by the Tuatha dé Danaan, allowing the text to establish ideal examples by means of

“beneathing” the Fomoire.

Such ideas of instable or untenable forms of governance leading to the need to conquer and overtop the troublesome Other are seen Cath Maige Tuired, a close cousin within the pseudohistorical textual tradition of the Lebor Gabála. Briefly, the tale is concerned with Bres, a

Fomoirian king and his foolish and selfish rule over the Tuatha dé Danaan. The Tuatha battle the

Fomoire, against overwhelming odds, and triumph over them in every aspect described by the text: craftsmanship, martial prowess, magical ability and practice, appropriate acknowledgement and handling of familial ties, and healing.23 Gray writes, “Although the Túatha dé Danaan are not consistently identified as gods in ‘The Second Battle of Mag Tuired,’ they present a model for human society, to be emulated if not equaled,” aligning the Tuatha with the Irish, the human authors of the Tuatha.24 The Fomoire are finally driven into the sea and drowned there. This imagery of the beneath plays nicely with Carey’s above etymology of Fomoire. The

“beneathers” finish beneath. Their accomplishments and prowess in all things are second to the

Irish invaders.

As seen above in Cath Maige Tuired through , the Irish are considerable craftsmen, perhaps signified in the Lebor Gabála via the land-shaping and river-bursting events. O’Rahilly links the veneration of craft to ideas of to the three Irish gods of Craftsmanship as an outburst of

23 Gray, Cath Maige Tuired: The Second Battle of Mag Tuired. 24 Gray, “Cath Maige Tuired: Myth and Structure.” p. 30. 8 the cultural veneration of the ability to shape and create.25 That same glorification, indeed deification, of craftsmanship through figures such as Lugh and his divine mastery of all crafts, including governance, in Cath Maige Tuired indicates a deep cultural, at least among members of its literary tradition, appreciation for the ability to create, to shape, to make. The Fomoire, shoved beneath as they are, cannot shape or govern the natural world. The sea and land overtop them. Their crafting skills are suborned to those of the Tuatha dé Danaan. They cannot keep pace with , Credne, and Luchta—the smith, the bronze worker, and the wright—all craftsmen.26 The Fomoire are held in comparison to Tuatha dé Danaan throughout Cath Maige

Tuired. O’Rahilly suggests the very name of Tuatha dé Danaan is a later assimilation of an earlier na trí dee dána, itself an outgrowth of na trí nDea nDana, which he translates as “the three gods of dan.” Dan is “skill, art.”27 If we believe O’Rahilly, then the Tuatha dé Danaan become gods of craftsmanship and art, progenitors and signifiers for Irishness, forever linking it to the ascendancy of the ability to forge and create, something the Fomoire are never portrayed to do, casting them again beneath the Irish and the Tuatha.

Related to ideas of the sea and other formations of the natural world, the Fomoire, in the

Lebor Gabála and the Cath Maige Tuired appear in different shapes. The Fir Bolg are required to burst new rivers and lakes into existence and to carve new plains, impressing an Irish identity denied the Fomoire onto the land in the same way their Irish identity is encoded onto the vellum of the various recensions of the Lebor Gabála. The Irish are signified through their land shaping deeds, and martial and governmental prowess in direct opposition to the Fomoire, such as Lugh’s

25 O’Rahilly, Early Irish History and Mythology. See especially his chapter dedicated to the idea and manifestation of these three gods, “The Three Gods of Craftsmanship.” pp. 308-40. 26 Gray, Cath Maige Tuired: The Second Battle of Mag Tuired. 27 Thomas F. O’Rahilly, “The Three Gods of Craftsmanship,” in Early Irish History and Mythology (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1957), 308-40. 9 complete dominance in all things war in Cath Maige Tuired.28 As the needs of the Irish change, so too does their literary cultural identity change. The Fomoire morph to fit their employers’ needs, to serve as a consistent starting place of definition of identity, albeit negatively. I argue that as concerns shifted from the politics of who should rule to agrarian concerns or land rights, the Fomoire’s depicted appearances shifted to meet those concerns. Monstrous, othered appearances were shaped and tailored into more anthropomorphic forms based on the needs of the authors of the text at the time. Moreover, the Irish are signified as on top as the cultural, if fictive in a factual sense, Others. Though not factual, the Others are nonetheless “True” and necessary because they speak to the requirements of the Irish psyche, of a need to triumph and win in order to shape the image of self and people. The Fomoire, are “topped” in conquest, battle, skill, governance, and by the land and sea.29

Scowcroft is correct to consistently return to a typological reading of the Fomoire and the story of the descendants of Cain. “We may even equate their Fomorian enemies who perish in the flood of Tor Cornaind, with the children of Cain who perish the Deluge, thus following the explicit claim…that the Fomoire descended from Cain.” 30 Both Fomoire and the children of

Cain perish in some form of deluge or flood—the Cainites in Genesis’ flood, the Fomoire with the tide rising over their fortress in Cath Maige Tuired.31 Such references to the Deluge may serve to further an agenda within the corpus that may be read as exceptional. After the flood comes God’s new Covenant with Noah. The Lebor Gabála, read as something akin to an Irish

28 Gray, Cath Maige Tuired: The Second Battle of Mag Tuired. Lugh wins a series of contests or challenges in order not only to gain entrance to the tent of the Irish leaders, but also to temporarily become king. 29 Ibid. Gray again captures this phenomenon well with “At no point in ‘The Second Battle of Mag Tuired’ do the Fomoire have the physically demonic character attributed to them in the Lebor Gabála Érenn, where they physically appear crooked, misshapen monsters. Their physical monstrosity has disappeared, but they symbolize chaos and disorder nevertheless. More specifically, they represent the malfunction of social order, whereas in the Lebor Gabála Érenn their deformity suggested the malfunction of physical or natural order.” pp. 35-6 30 Scowcroft, “Leabhar Gabhála Part II: The Growth of the Tradition.” p. 27. 31 This may lend some support of Carey’s proposed etymology of the name of the race. 10

Old Testament, has an implicit message of the Irish as God’s chosen people and the consistent

Irish victory over the Fomoire as the fulfillment of the new covenant generated therefrom. Such a reading does not occur in isolation. Anglo-Saxon equations of themselves to the Hebrews of old as groups subject to persecution even as they are elite and holy occur within several works.32

The Irish borrow the authority of the scriptures, as did others, to further empower their cultural definition of self.

Each group in the Lebor Gabála must conquer, or top, the Fomoire with manifest physicality in order to create their new Irish identity on vellum and carve it onto the land itself as the Lebor Gabála contains a large amount of Dinnshenchas, or place lore, similar to many other medieval Irish texts.33 New groups arriving in Ireland in the Lebor Gabála burst rivers and lakes and carve plains upon the island as well as link their names and identities to locations all over the island, pushing the Fomoire down not only in their cultural consciousness, but also beneath the waves, the land, and the new Irish conquering people.34 As the newly arrived and newly minted

“Irish” groups change and sculpt the land, laying a new set of foundations metaphorically and literally on the land, they build atop the remnants of previous occupants, most importantly the

Fomoire.

32 Both Judith and Exodus immediately spring to mind. See Mark Griffith, ed., Judith (Exeter: Univ. of Exeter Press, 1997). See also Peter J. Lucas, ed., Exodus, Rev. ed (Exeter: Univ. of Exeter Press, 1994). 33 For a brief discussion of Dinnshenchas, see Dooley and Roe, Tales of the Elders of Ireland. p. ix. 34 It is perhaps tangential, but still worthy of note that this Othered, typological reading places the Fomoire in an interesting parallel to, perhaps, misunderstood and villainous Others in medieval literature. Beowulf’s Grendel is written as the descendant of Cain, and is certainly an outsider to the Geats and to Heorot. The Welsh foundation myth has the Britons sailing to Wales and finding the land inhabited by monstrous giants whom they must overcome to inhabit their promised land. These two examples encompass only a brief sample of what is certainly a wide array of characters, types, and figures throughout the medieval corpus. See Robert D. Fulk et al., eds., Klaeber’s Beowulf and The Fight at Finnsburg, 4. ed., based on the 3. with 1. and 2. suppl., reprint, Toronto Old English Series 21 (Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Press, 2009) and see John Jay Parry, trans., Brut Y Brenhinedd (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Medieval Academy of America, 1937). 11

The need to create, through narrative and pseudohistory, a series of interruptions to Irish sovereignty, is curious. Scowcroft speaks clearly to this question as well:

[Lebor Gabála] grew up in response to a medieval problem—the vast blank

separating Irish tradition from accepted world history—a problem it solved in a

medieval way, allowing Christian universalism to multiply its patterns across an

Irish stage. For the early Middle Ages, the Bible served as the primary source for

ancient world history, the chronicles of Eusebius and Orosius as its principal

compendia, harmonizations, and continuations, and Isidore's Etymologiae as a

general [encyclopedia]. These works inspired not only the historiographical context

and framework for [Lebor Gabála] but to a remarkable extent the content itself,

which adapts even pagan theology and contemporary politics to biblical myths of

origin, migration, and population.35

The text is nothing less than a definition of cultural identity. Such a tradition occurring across the various kingdoms across the island and the independent monasteries not tied to a diocese speak a sense of unity, derived through land and culture if not politics.36 The need to self-define via pseudohistory transcends politics. The Fomoire are nothing more than a recurring tool to serve that identity, an Other for the Irish to consistently belittle and against which they may

35 Scowcroft, “Leabhar Gabhála Part II: The Growth of the Tradition.” p. 63. 36 See Athena T. Knudson, “Raiders from the North: Irish Enslavement during the Viking Age” (University of Colorado Boulder, 2016). Though the title speaks of Irish enslavement, the thesis well describes the disparate tribal culture in Ireland before and during their interactions with the Vikings. See also Kathleen Hughes, “The Celtic Church: Is This a Valid Concept?,” Cambridge Medieval Celtic Studies 1 (Summer 1981): 1–20 for a discussion of the differences in monastic structure between the islands of Britain and Ireland. 12 define themselves as superior. The Lebor Gabála takes the place of the “compendia, harmonizations, and continuations” of which Scowcroft speaks, now distinctly Irish, and even does work as a form of the “Irish” Old Testament, an ultimate form of authority, to be interpreted and retransmitted.

Nearby neighbors in Britain certainly experience a string of political ruptures: the

Romans of the first century, the Anglo-Saxons of the fifth and sixth centuries, the Danish incursions of the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries, and, finally, the Normans of the eleventh century. In contrast, the Irish experience had, during the formation of the literary tradition of the

Lebor Gabála, much more governmental, political, cultural, and linguistic stability than the

Picts, Welsh, Anglo-Saxons, or Anglo-Normans. The Lebor Gabála frames a desire to create a consistent, and eventually triumphant, struggle for sovereignty and primacy. I argue the drive to create and overtop through a string of political and martial struggles indicates a desire for mythic origins and a link to the distant biblical past to cement the destiny and momentous antecedent of the Irish people and culture.

To continue ideas of co-opted authority, the genealogies of the Mil Espáine bear a striking resemblance to the Germanic genealogies of heroes and kings. The Mil Espáine share roots with the Tuatha dé Danaan, the Fomoire, fosterage with the Fir Bolg, and even the gods, much as many Germanic genealogies conclude with Wotan as a progenitor, placing the Irish above the Fomoire by aligning them with the divine and heaven, above their at times demonic foe.37 As pagan genealogies link to their pagan All-Father, the Christian Irish cultural genealogy links back to biblical prehistory: the Deluge mirroring the function of the linkage to a mythic and

37 Liam Ó Buchalla, “The Lebar Gabála or Book of Invasions of Ireland: Notes on Its Construction,” Journal of the Cork Historical and Archaeological Society 67 (1962): 70–79 analyzes the constructions of these genealogies and their purpose quite well. 13 divine past as a means to gain authority and power. Oðinn for the pagan. Scripture for the

Christian. The Irish not only wish to link their genealogical roots to ecclesiastical and Christian roots, but also to be triumphant conquerors of demonic and powerful inhabitants of their island.

This idea, through identification with and conquering various aspects of the land made manifest and those who currently and poorly inhabit that land solidly establishes the Irish as Irish by conquering and manufacturing the land over thousands of years through various lake and river bursting and plains forging episodes in the Lebor Gabála. They are the destined people to rule, finally ascending after cleaving to structural mythological trends of wandering, exile, and reconquering found in Augustine’s Sex Ætates Mundi and other cultural mythos—none of which is possible without the Fomoire as set of starting blocks from which the Irish groups can spring.38

Four of the five races who colonize the island after the deluge—Partholon’s people, the

Fir Domnann, the Tuatha dé Danaan, and the Mil Espáine—are all required to fight the

Fomoire.39 These same Fomoire seem at odds even with the gods of those peoples. They are opposed to the Dagda, through his son, in an episode from Tochmarc Étaíne, as well as the role the Dagda plays within the text of Cath Maige Tuired by shrewdly negotiating all of the stolen cattle away from his Fomorian foes.40 Why is this cultural group so set apart from the six invading groups in the Lebor Gabála as something else? They certainly seem to belong to the island, the land, or perhaps the sea surrounding the land. They appear in five of the six invasion

38 Though I do not wish to engage in a structural analysis similar to Alwyn Rees and Brinley Rees, Celtic Heritage: Ancient Tradition in Ireland and Wales, 1991 ed. (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1961) here, they bear mentioning. Their analysis is focused, according to the principles of Claude Levi-Strauss and others, on aligning Irish myth with other creation myths, mainly Indic, in the Indo-European tradition. My investigation focuses solely on the way the Irish look back at themselves through their imagined triumph over a fictive Other. 39 See Lebor Gabála Érenn, ed. and transl. R.A.S. MacAlister, 5 vols (Dublin 1932-56). I use Fir Domnann here to differentiate the reintroduction of what the Lebor Gabála describes as the same people after they spend 230 years in servitude as the “Men of Bags” in Greece. I borrow the term from O’Rahilly. See O’Rahilly, especially his chapter "The Laginian Invasion." pp. 92-146. 40 Gray, Cath Maige Tuired: The Second Battle of Mag Tuired. 14 episodes, but they are distinctly not Irish, not on the side of humans, and relegated to be beneath them even by the etymology of their name. Each subsequent colonizing group or people interact with the Fomoire, the “beneathers,” conquering and pushing the Fomoire beneath the new group.

They are not only pushed down culturally and martially, but notably by the Tuatha de Danaan in

Cath Maige Tuired, the Fomoire are pushed physically out or down as well, furthering the continuing motif of cultural identity through victory and location above the Fomoire as discourse centered on the Other.

The Fomoire are a literary outgrowth of and signify the need that the Irish have to establish a cultural identity of and through victory over an Other. Again, I advocate the

“beneathers” were designed exclusively to serve that purpose. Their appearance in the earliest portions of the Irish literary tradition indicates a deeply rooted need, at least present on the island, to challenge and to win against something and someone. The Irish create the identity of victory and triumph, a need for proven and established superiority. The idea resonates of concepts of tribalism present even today, evoking troubling ideas of gamesmanship and a lack of interface with other discourses common to contemporary large conversations about race, gender, and politics—all tribes that actively engage in topping an Other just as the Irish do to the

Fomoire in a variety of discourses linked to identity politics. We are “us” and they are “them.”41

This aspect of human behavior in mind, perhaps the Irish need to create the Fomoire in order to beat them fits perfectly with humans and the way we group together for identity and interaction with other humans and with the natural world. The Irish only do what seems to be instinct. As an insular culture, they have no physically present Other, no other people or cultural group, so

41 See Benedict R. O’G Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, Rev. and extended ed (London ; New York: Verso, 1991) as a discussion on the identity politics and divisions I mention here, generally. 15 they create one to occupy the cognitive and intellectual space. The Fomoire, though they appear in the text as hideously bizarre at times are a most natural and in-born reflex of a tribal people in need of something against which they might define themselves. 16

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