Page:Origin and Growth of Religion (Rhys).djvu/625

Rh, comes to Britain as a foreign oppression, just as Morc is said in Irish legend to bring his fleet from Africa (p. 584), the land peopled by the descendants of Ham, the reputed father of the whole brood, according to the story as modified to join on to the Bible. But Welsh literature has preserved no clear and sweeping distinction between the spirits of the pagan world, corresponding to the Irish division into Tuatha Dé on the one hand, and Fomori and Fir Bolg on the other. This Irish classification, otherwise expressed, assumes a quasi-historical aspect: the Ultonian cycle of stories substitute the Ultonians under Conchobar for the Tuatha Dé under Nuada, and the Men of Erinn, that is to say, of Leinster, Munster and Connaught, for Fomori and Fir Bolg, whilst Lug, the great warrior of the Tuatha Dé, has his counterpart among the Ultonians in Lug's later self, Cúchulainn. The ranging of the Ultonians or the Men of Ulster against the Men of the rest of Erinn, looks like an anticipation of the history of Ireland in later times; but that is accidental, since the district chiefly associated with the Ultonian heroes of Irish epic tales consists of a tract of country extending from beyond Armagh towards Rh