Page:The courtship of Ferb (Leahy).djvu/111

 place seven years after the events mentioned in the "Courtship of Ferb," Cuchulainn must have been a boy at the time; but this visit of the Spanish Amazon to Ulster "for the love that she bore him" may be a survival of the conception of Cuchulainn as a divine character, which he is supposed to have been in the original form of the story.

15.—Who came of the race of the Fomorians.—This name denotes in Irish mediaeval legend a race of prehistoric pirates who had a fortress at Tory Island off the north-western coast of Donegal. The name occurs in the accounts of more than one race which is recorded to have dwelt in Ireland before the Celts arrived there; and the prehistoric tale of the "Second Battle of Moytura" relates a defeat of the Fomorians, led by the giant Balor of the Mighty Blows. The name of Fomorians was generally applied to pirates who appeared as late as the heroic period; and in our tale Conor is, in his attack on the house of Gerg, supported by the Fomorians only, not by the warriors of Ulster. A poet, who sympathised with the defeated men of Connaught, could therefore with safety show his sympathy without any fear of wounding the susceptibilities of the ruling race of Ulster,