Notes
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.
Page 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[1] 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, pro-
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- ↑ The Gaulish mercenaries, who marched with Queen Maev on the occasion of the Tain bo Cualgne, may be compared with these foreign allies of Conor. See Miss Hull's "Cuchullin Saga," p. 126.
