country, and appear to have been of a somewhat higher ethnological
grade, although, like the Formorians, short, dark, and swarthy.
Doubtless the latter were not entirely exterminated to make way for the
Firbolgs, any more than the Firbolgs to make way for the Danaans,
Milesians, and other successive races; such wholesale exterminations
being, in fact, very rare, especially in a country which like Ireland
seems specially laid out by kindly nature for the protection of a weaker
race struggling in the grip of a stronger one.

After the Firbolgs, though I should be sorry to be obliged to say how
long after, fresh and more important tribes of invaders began to appear.
The first of these were the Tuatha-da-Danaans, who arrived under the
leadership of their king Nuad, and took possession of the east of the
country. These Tuatha-da-Danaans are believed to have been large,
blue-eyed people of Scandinavian origin, kinsmen and possibly ancestors
of those Norsemen or "Danes" who in years to come were destined to work
such woe and havoc upon the island.

Many battles took place between these Danaans and the earlier Firbolgic
settlers--the native owners as no doubt they felt themselves of the
country. One of the best substantiated of these, not, indeed, by history
or even tradition, but by a more solid testimony, that of the stone
remains left on the spot, prove, at any rate, that _some_ long-sustained
battle was at some remote period fought on the spot.

This is the famous pre-historic battle of Moytura, rather the Southern
Moytura, for there were two; the other, situated not far from the
present town of Sligo, retaining "the largest collection of pre-historic
remains," says Dr. Petrie, "in any region in the world with the
exception of Carnac." This second battle of Moytura was fought upon the