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This is a good example of what came down in Pagan Ireland, and how the Christian redactors treated it. They had heard of the existence of the Fomoroh before the coming of Partholan, and thought it wise to provide the latter with a war against them. Later, as we shall see, the Fomoroh stood for the over-sea people westward, the Atlantean giant-sorcerers.
As if the Irish took it direct from history and symbolism, and the Greeks from the Irish. And why not? since in the nature of things Ireland must have been so much nearer the scene of action. Lugh grew up among his mother's people, but remembered his divine descent on his father's side; and when it came to the War of the Fomoroh against Ireland, was for fighting for his father's people.
'Fomoroh, by the way, may very well be translated 'Water-men'; fo I take to be the Greek upo, 'under, and 'mor' is the 'sea. Now the Battle of Mag Itha, between Partholan and the Fomorians, is a very late invention; not devised, I think, until the eleventh century. And of course there was no war or contact between the First Race and the Water-men, who had been destroyed long before.
But when the Partholanians fought with and defeated these Fomoroh, they were said to have "freed Ireland from a foreign foe"; this though the Fomorians were there first, and though the Partholanians were "invaders," and utterly ceased to be after a time, so that no drop of their blood runs in Irish veins.
What happened was this: In the first battle Nuada, king of the Danaans, lost his hand; and, because a king must be blemishless, lost his kinghood too. It went to Bres son of Elatha; whose mother was Danaan, but whose unknown father was of the Fomoroh. In person, Bres was handsome like the Danaans; in character he was Fomorian altogether.
Then the Fomoroh sent a spy into the camp of the Gods, who achieved killing Goibniu with one of the latter's own spears; and by reason of that it was going ill with the Gods the next day in the battle. And it was going worse with them because of Balor of the Mighty Blows, and he taking the field at last for the Fomorians,
Why, then, does Ireland identify itself with the one race, and discard the other as "foreign foes"? Because the Partholanians represent the first human race, but the Fomoroh or 'Water-men' were unhuman, and a kind of lusus naturae.
There is a subtle connexion between the Firbolgs and Fomoroh: the former are the men, the latter the Gods, of the same race; the Firbolgs stood originally for the mindless men of the early third, men evolving up out of the lower kingdoms towards the point of becoming human and mind-endowed; the Fomorians were the Gods or so to say Spiritual Powers of those lower worlds; the forces in opposition to upward evolution.
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