The Nature of the Fomoiri: The Dark Other in the Medieval Irish Imagination

Abstract

Scholars undertaking to reconstruct the mythology of the ancient Celts often point to the Túatha Dé Danann and Fomoiri of Irish legend as representing earlier gods of light opposed to gods of darkness and chaos; the hostilities between them are regarded as the Irish reflex of an Indo-European ‘War of the Gods’. The prevalence of this polarized model is largely due to two influential texts, Cath Maige Tuired and Lebor Gabála Érenn: elsewhere in the tradition, in sources of all periods, the connotations of the two terms overlap repeatedly, and the nature of their relationship is profoundly ambiguous. This contribution undertakes to survey the evidence – arguing that, for the Irish, darkness was by no means incompatible with divinity.