The Book of Invasions

The First Invasion

The first invasion of Inis Fail (Ireland) was led by the great woman warrior Cessair daughter of Bithra. In the land, from where they had gone forth, women ruled, and the line of succession was through them. Cessair and her followers had set out in three ships, but two were lost at sea. They landed at Dúnnam Bárc on Bantry Bay in Inis Fail. The only survivors were Cessair, fifty other women, and three men: Fintan Mac Brocrcuill, Bith and Ladra.

The women were split evenly among the men. Each also took one as his wife: Fintán took Cessair because she was the greatest and most powerful, Bith took Barrfhind because she was the most beautiful and Ladra took Alba because she was the most skilled. However, Bith and Ladra lived only a few years before dying and Ladra was the first man buried in Inis Fail.

When the fifty women all turned their attention to Fintan, and he saw that they were placing too much responsibility on him, so he fled from them, by turning himself into a salmon and disappeared into the sea. With no men the women lived on but humans eventually died off as no more human children were born.

But some of the women followers of Cessair, in their loneliness, had sought solace in the ugly misshapen Fomorians. The Fomorians, the original inhabitants of Inis Fail, and a few of the women had children by them. Though the Fomorians, in that time were mostly monstrous in shape, they also, being shape shifters, could easily transform themselves into forms that were pleasing to the women. It is also said, of these children of Domnu, that because of this interbreeding, many of them were more like humans in form although very much like the Formorians in their magical abilities. They also began to live in houses and think and act more like humans. This explains why many of the Fomorians, that are later to be encountered, have as their primary form, one similar to that of men and women.

Fintán was the only one of the race of men who survived from that time although he did so as a salmon. There was a well below the sea where the nine hazels of wisdom were growing; that is, the hazels of inspiration and of the knowledge of poetry. Their leaves and their blossoms would break out in the same hour, and would fall on the well in a shower that raised a purple wave. The salmon Fintán that was waiting there would eat the nuts, and their color would come out in the red spots of its skin. Other salmon came and ate of the nuts and any person that would eat one of those salmon would know all wisdom and all poetry of the world. There were seven streams of wisdom that sprang from that well and turned back to it again; and the people of many arts have all drank from that well.

However, Fintan eventually became the Salmon of Knowledge, which gained all the world's knowledge after eating nine hazelnuts that fell into the well. Later he became an eagle and a hawk, living for 5,500 years, at which time he became a man again and recounted Ireland's history. Click here to Continue.

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