Fir Bolg

Region/Culture: Northern Europe
Mythos: Irish Mythology, Celtic Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Heroes and Mortals
Mythical Attributes: A mortal race of Iron Age settlers said to have organised Ireland into its first five provinces and to have raised the first High Kingship at Tara before the coming of the Tuatha Dé Danann.
Role in Mythos: The fourth race to take Ireland in the Lebor Gabála Érenn, defeated by the Tuatha Dé Danann at the First Battle of Mag Tuired and granted Connacht as their remaining province.
Relation to Humans: The Fir Bolg are remembered as fully mortal humans rather than gods or supernatural beings, and several Connacht families traced their descent from the Fir Bolg champion Sreng for many centuries after the legendary defeat. Their story sits at the boundary in Irish pseudo-history where the inhabitants of Ireland shift from semi-divine invaders to recognisably human populations.

The fleet came down the western coast under a grey sky, and the men aboard had not seen Ireland for centuries. Their forefathers had fled it. The descendants had lived as slaves in Greece, hauling leather sacks of soil up bare hillsides to make farmland out of stone, and the bags had hung from their belts long enough to give them their name. The men of bags. When they finally cut the ropes, stitched the same sacks into hide boats, and ran for the open water, they sailed west on the same tide that, the chroniclers say, carried the Israelites out of Egypt. They were going home.

Ireland was empty when their five chiefs walked ashore and divided the country between them. Gann took North Munster. Sengann took the south. Genann took Connacht, Rudraige took Ulster, Slánga took Leinster. They drew the first five provinces, raised the first High Kingship at Tara, and held it through nine kings across thirty-seven years. The land was theirs in a way it had not been anyone’s before. Their reign was the first peace the island had ever known.

They were not the giants or wonder-workers of later Irish stories. The descriptions that survive give them as short, dark-haired, swarthy men, sinewy and sun-darkened from Greek soil and Greek labour, a working people who had built themselves into shape with their own backs. They carried iron-tipped spears that were broad-bladed and meant for thrust and chop rather than throw. Their craft was the practical kind: the kingship, the division of land, the imposition of law. The smell of forge-smoke and turned earth follows them across the early pages of the chronicles.

Then the Tuatha Dé Danann came out of the north, in cloud or in ships set to flame on the shore behind them, depending on which version is being told. They came with magic the Fir Bolg did not have. Their king, Nuada, sent word to the Fir Bolg king Eochaid that they wanted half of Ireland. Eochaid sent back his refusal. The two armies met on the plain of Mag Tuired in the west, near the Pass of Balgatan, and they fought for four days.

It was a slow, brutal battle. The Fir Bolg held longer than anyone had expected them to. On the fourth day, the Fir Bolg champion Sreng walked out across the trampled ground and called Nuada to single combat. Nuada came. They struck each other with a violence the field had not yet seen, and at the height of it Sreng brought his great sword down and took Nuada’s right hand off at the wrist. A king of the Tuatha Dé could not rule maimed. Even so, the Fir Bolg lost their king Eochaid that day, and a hundred thousand of their men. By the end, Sreng stood with three hundred surviving warriors and would not surrender.

The Tuatha Dé offered them peace and a province of their choosing. They chose Connacht, the rough western country, and went there to live as a defeated but unbroken people. The rest of the survivors scattered to the rim of the world: the Aran Islands, Islay, the Isle of Man, Rathlin. In Connacht, the men traced their lineage from Sreng for centuries afterwards.

Their origins are layered. They are descended from Nemed, the leader of an earlier failed settlement of Ireland whose people scattered after a long war with the Fomorians. One branch of the survivors went north and became the Tuatha Dé Danann. Another went south to Greece and became the Fir Bolg. A third went west and became the Britons. The two peoples who later met on the plain of Mag Tuired were cousins, separated by a few centuries and a great deal of distance, and the war between them was a family fight as much as a conquest.

What set the Fir Bolg apart was what they made of themselves rather than what they were given. The Tuatha Dé brought four treasures from four mythical northern cities, including a sword that could not miss and a stone that screamed under the true king. The Fir Bolg brought no such things. They brought the kingship itself. They were the first people in the Irish chronicles to organise the land, to draw the provinces, and to set a king over them by common agreement rather than descent from gods. Their strength was political. They taught the island how to be ruled.

Their weakness was the same thing. They had no druids, no shape-changers, no half-divine champions. They could swing a sword and hold a line and outwait a siege, and that was all. Against an enemy with magic, they bled. The chroniclers note this without sentiment. The Fir Bolg lost because the people who came after them were better armed in the only way that mattered.

Sreng’s three hundred went west and stayed there. The province they founded has never quite forgotten them. In the medieval pedigrees, the families of Connacht ran their bloodlines back to that day at the Pass of Balgatan, when a champion with a heavy sword struck the king of the gods and would not break.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who were the Fir Bolg?

The Fir Bolg were the fourth race to settle Ireland in the medieval pseudo-history Lebor Gabála Érenn. They were mortal humans descended from the earlier people of Nemed, returning to Ireland after generations of slavery in Greece, and they ruled the island for thirty-seven years under a succession of nine High Kings before being defeated by the Tuatha Dé Danann.

What does the name Fir Bolg mean?

Fir Bolg is usually translated as “men of bags.” According to the legend recorded in the Lebor Gabála Érenn, the Fir Bolg earned the name when they were enslaved in Greece and forced to carry leather sacks of soil up bare hillsides to make farmland out of stone.

Did the Fir Bolg fight the Tuatha Dé Danann?

Yes. The Fir Bolg fought the Tuatha Dé Danann at the First Battle of Mag Tuired, a four-day engagement near the Pass of Balgatan in the west of Ireland. The Fir Bolg king Eochaid was killed and roughly a hundred thousand Fir Bolg fell, but the Fir Bolg champion Sreng cut off the right hand of the Tuatha Dé king Nuada in single combat before the three hundred surviving Fir Bolg accepted peace.

Where did the Fir Bolg go after they were defeated?

The victorious Tuatha Dé Danann offered the surviving Fir Bolg one province of Ireland, and Sreng’s people chose Connacht. Other survivors fled to the islands at the western and northern edge of Ireland, including the Aran Islands, Islay, the Isle of Man, and Rathlin. Families in Connacht traced their descent from Sreng for many centuries afterwards.

Why are the Fir Bolg important in Irish mythology?

The Fir Bolg are credited in the Lebor Gabála Érenn with establishing the basic political shape of Ireland. They divided the country into its five traditional provinces under their five chieftains and raised the first High Kingship at Tara, setting the framework that later peoples and kings inherited.