Page 19 - Demo

Chapter One 19
other men, Fiontan, Bith, and Ladhra, along with ifty women, settled here shortly (some accounts claim forty days) before the Deluge. The tradition also maintains that Fiontan survived and lived to the time of St. Patrick, having undergone several transformations in the meantime.
Echoing the story of the wanderings of the Israelites, their sojourn in Egypt, their many wars and vicissitudes, and their eventual establishment in a promised land, these early set- tlers were followed, many years later (possibly three hundred years), about 2000 B.C. by a colony from Greece led by a parricide named Parthalon who came with his three sons, their wives, and a thousand others: it is told that Parthalon led Greece after slaying his father. Often associated with the Biblical Magog, the Parthalonians, in Irish, na Partholónaigh, settled in the valley of the river Lifey near Dublin and remained there for about 300 years. The demise of the Parthalonians came about when a plague descended upon them and quickly annihilated the entire colony. Their place of burial is still called in Irish Támhleacht (Támh translating as –a plague, death, leacht-monument) and is now a sprawling suburb of Dublin city-present day Tallaght.
According to the tradition, the country remained uninhabited for a number of years fol- lowing the destruction of the Parthalonians, that is, until another race led by a man named Nemed, in Irish Neimheadh, arrived ‘from beyond the sea.’ Clanna Neimhidh, the Nemedians, who some sources assert originated from around ‘Scythia’ on the shores of the Black Sea, but who may, like the Parthalonians also have come from Greece, remained in Ireland for more than 200 years.
It is told that during their stay they too were all but exterminated by plague, but also by the incessant attacks of a race of savage sea-kings and pirates called na Fomhoraigh, the Fomorians. Hailing variously, it is claimed from either Africa or the Hebridean Islands, or both, this ubiquitous race of ‘sea robbers’ often frequented that part of the north-west coast now included in counties Donegal and Sligo, and from their main base on Tory Island made raids all along the neighbouring coastline, often penetrating far inland, plundering and murdering as they went. These attacks became so oppressive, that in time the surviving Nemedians, thirty in number, as some sources maintain, led the country. It is told that they left in three separate groups-two of these made their way to Greece, while the third settled in Europe, mainly in Scotland and the northern lands of the Continent.
After a lapse of some 200 years, the descendants of one of the groups which led to