Milesians (Irish)

In Irish mythology the Milesians or Sons of Míl Espáine were the final inhabitants of Ireland, representing the Goidelic Celts.

Myth

The Lebor Gabála (Book of Invasions - probably first written in the second half of the 11th century CE) describes the origin of the Gaelic people. Under the leadership of Galamh or Golam (Míl Espáine, the soldier of Hispania - a descendant of Japheth, one of Noah's three sons), they came out of ancient Scythia (southern Russia - a land that had obtained sovereignty shortly after the Deluge) to live for a while in Egypt. According to Edmund Campion writing in 1571, at the court of King Amenophis of Egypt, Galamh married the king's daughter, Scota; when the pharaoh had drowned in the Red Sea, Galamh and his people wandered for many years before conquering Hispania (Iberia, or modern Portugal and Spain) and establishing the city of Brigantia.

It had been prophesied that Galamh's descendants would rule Ireland, but he himself never reached its shores, dying in Gallaecia (modern Galicia and northern Portugal) in the north-west of the Iberian Peninsula. One day, on looking out from a tower, his uncle ĺth saw the island of Ireland (Hibernia) across the sea and decided to sail there with Scota: on arriving in Ireland he met the country's three kings - men of the Tuatha Dé Danann - and was killed by them. Out of vengeance, eight sons of Galamh (ie. sons of the Míl Espáine, thus Milesians) and nine brothers of Íth set out from their territory (said to have been around modern Bayonne in the Basque Country) and invaded Ireland.¹They arrived in Ireland during the festival of Beltane, led by Míl's son Amergin. The Milesians defeated the Tuatha Dé Danann and took Tara, their capital city, establishing their own capital there. On their way they met the goddesses Ériu, Banba and Fodla, promising them that the land would be named after the one whose advice helped the invaders in their conquest of the country. Ériu's advice led them in their mission and the land was named Ériu (ancient) or Éire (modern) in her honour. The Tuatha Dé Danann were defeated at the Battle of Tailtiu, and, after a short resistance, a truce was entered and the land was divided: the Milesians retained the part above ground, while the Tuatha Dé Danann were given the underworld. Éremon, a son of Galamh, became ruler of the northern half of Ireland, and another son, Éber Finn, became ruler of the southern half. Some time later they went to war, and Éber Finn was killed in battle, while Éremon went on to become the first Milesian king of the entire land.

Legacy

In the historical scheme proposed by T. F. O'Rahilly the descent of the kings of Ireland from the sons of Míl is a fiction intended to provide legitimacy for the Goidels, who invaded Ireland in the 1st or 2nd century BC, giving them the same ancient origin as the indigenous peoples they dominated. However, it has been argued (see fn.1) that the story is a much later invention of medieval Irish historians, inspired by their knowledge of the Seven Books of History Against the Pagans, written by the early 5th century Gallaecian cleric, Paulus Orosius. See also Early history of Ireland.

For centuries, the myth of the Míl Éspaine and the Milesians was used in Ireland to win and secure dynastic and political legitimacy. For example, in his Two bokes of the histories of Ireland (1571), Campion tried to use the myth to establish an ancient right of the British monarch to rule Ireland; in A View of the Present State of Ireland, Edmund Spenser accepted and rejected various parts of the myth both to denigrate the Irish of his day and to justify English colonisation of Ireland in the 1590s (at the height of the Anglo-Spanish war).²Probably the last major outing for the myth was during the Contention of the bards, which appears to have rumbled on from 1616 to 1624. During this period poets from the north and south of the island extolled the merits of their respective peoples (Eremonians and Eberians), at the expense of the other side, and often descended to a pettiness that some contemporaries thought foolish. Geoffrey Keating's Foras Feasa ar Eirinn (written c.1634) used the myth to promote the legitimacy of the Stuart claim to royal authority in Ireland (related to the origin of the Lia Fáil), demonstrating that Charles I was descended, through Brian Ború, Éber and Galamh, from Noah and, ultimately, from Adam.³

Terminology

Note: the term "Milesian" is an artificial English one, based on the name of the supposed ancestor, Míl. Any similarity to the name "Milesians" as applied to the ancient Greeks of Miletus is coincidental.

Footnotes

¹ Much of this summary is derived from John Carey Did the Irish Come from Spain? The Legend of the Milesians History Ireland (Autumn 2001) pp.8-11.

² Andrew Hadfield Briton and Scythian: Tudor representations of Irish origins Irish Historical Studies 28(1993)390, 395.

³ See generally, Bernadette Cunningham The World of Geoffrey Keating: history, myth and religion in 17th century Ireland (Dublin 2000).

Genealogy of the Milesian High Kings

Breogan