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But the De Danaans had burned their boats; they sought refuge rather by land, retreating northward till they came to the shelter of the great central woods. The Sons of Milid pursued them, and, overtaking them at Tailten on the Blackwater, some ten miles northwest of Tara, they fought another battle; after it, the supremacy of the De Danaans definitely passed away.
The ideal of beauty was still the golden hair and blue eyes of the De Danaans, and we cannot doubt that their race persisted side by side with the Sons of Milid, retaining a certain predominance in the north and northeast of the island, the first landing-place of the De Danaan invaders. Of this mingled race was the great Rudraige, from whom the most famous rulers of Emain descended.
She would not admit her lord's advantage, but sent forthwith to seek where another bull like the bull of Ailill might be found, and tidings were brought to her of the brown bull of Cuailgne, of Cuailgne named after a chief of the Sons of Milid, fallen ages ago in the pursuit of the De Danaans, when the De Danaans retreated before the Sons of Milid from the southern headland of Slieve Mish to the ford at green Tailten by the Boyne, and thence further northwards to where Cuailgne of the Sons of Milid was killed.
But whether from Gaul or Spain, the sons of Milid were of undoubted Gaelic race, in every feature of character and complexion resembling the continental Gauls. We must remember that, in the centuries before the northward spread of Rome, the Gauls were the great central European power.
Twenty-six hundred years ago their earlier tribal life was consolidated into a stable empire under Ambigatos; Galicia in Eastern Austria and Galicia in Western Spain mark their extreme borders towards the rising and setting sun. Several centuries before the days of Ambigatos, in the older period of tribal confederation, was the coming of the Gaelic Sons of Milid to Ireland.
The battles of Southern and Northern Moytura gave the De Danaans sway over the island. After they had ruled for many centuries, they in their turn were subjected to invasion, as the Firbolg and Fomorian had been before them. The newcomers were the Sons of Milid, and their former home was either Gaul or Spain.
The De Danaans must ere this have spread through all of the island, except the western province assigned to the Firbolgs; for we find them opposing, but vainly opposing, the Sons of Milid, at the very place of their landing.
Their eyes are gray, greenish or hazel, not clear blue, like the eyes of the Baltic race; and though fair-haired, they are easily distinguished from the golden-haired Norsemen. Such are the descendants of the Sons of Milid. Coming from Gaul or Spain, the Sons of Milid landed in one of the great fiords that penetrate between the mountains of Kerry long after so named from the descendants of Ciar.
These same fiords between the hills have been the halting-place of continental invaders for ages; hardly a century has passed since the last landing there of continental soldiers; there was another invasion a century before that, and yet another a hundred years earlier. But the Sons of Milid showed the way.
It would seem that with the coming of the Sons of Milid the destiny of Ireland was rounded and completed; from that time onward, for more than two thousand years, was a period of uniform growth and settled life and ideals; a period whose history and achievements we are only beginning to understand.
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