Ancient history

Fîr Bolg (or Fîr Bholg)

One of the six races of Irish mythology which successively occupied the island. According to the Book of Conquests, they would have arrived fourth, after the Nemed, of whom they would be descendants from Greece, and would have preceded the Tuatha Dé Danann who faced them and defeated them at the first battle of Mag Tuired. Their name has sometimes been linked to that of the Belgians, but this connection seems unconvincing. They did not contribute, as was the case of their predecessors, to the creation of the landscape of the island, but tradition attributes to them the division of Ireland into five provinces:Ulster, Leinster, Munster and Connaught, which correspond to the four cardinal points, and Meath, the province which surrounds the center of the island fixed at Uisnech. They would also have introduced royalty and its rules of government.


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