TRANSACTIONS OF THE SECTIONS. 123 
between Mayo and Sligo, where in time the two races appear to have coalesced 
by that natural law which brings the dark and the fair together. 
Moreover it has been recorded that the conquering race sent their small dark 
opponents into Connaught, while they themselves took possession of the rich lands 
further east, and not only established themselves at Tara but spread into the 
south. It is remarkable that in time large numbers of the Dannans themselves 
were banished to the West, and likewise that the last forcible deportation of the 
native Irish race (so late as the seventeenth century) was when the people of 
this province got the choice of going “ to Connaught or Hell,” in the former of 
which, possibly, they joined some of the original stock. The natural beauty of the 
lakes and mountains of Connaught remains as it was thousands of years ago; but 
no doubt if some of the legislators of the period to which I have already referred 
ee now behold its fat pasture-plains, they might prefer them to the flax lands 
of Ulster. 
These Dannans had a globular form of head, of which I have already pub- 
lished examples. For the most part I believe they burned their dead or sacri- 
ficed to their manes, and placed an urn with its incinerated contents—human or 
animal—in the grave, where the hero was either stretched at length or crouched in 
an attitude similar to that adopted by the ancient Peruvians, as I have elsewhere 
explained. These Irish urns, which are the earliest relics of our ceramic art that 
have come down to the present time, are very graceful in form, and some of them 
most beautifully decorated, as may be seen in our various museums. 
Specimens of this Dannan race still exist, but have gradually mixed with their 
forerunners to the present day. Here is what old MacFirbis wrote of them two 
hundred years ago :—‘‘ Every one who is fair-haired, vengeful, large, and every 
plunderer, professors of musical and entertaining performances, who are adepts of 
druidical and magical arts, they are the descendants of the Tuatha-de-Dannans.” 
They were not only fair but sandy in many instances, and consequently extensively 
freckled. 
It is affirmed that the Dannans ruled in Ireland for a long time, until another 
inroad was made into the island by the Milesians—said to be brave, chivalrous, 
skilled in war, good navigators, proud, boastful, and much superior in outward 
adornment as well as mental culture, but probably not better armed than their 
opponents. They deposed the three last Dannan kings and their wives, and rose 
to be, it is said, the dominant race—assuming the sovereignty, becoming the aristo- 
cracy and landed proprietors of the country, and giving origin to those chieftains 
that afterwards rose to the title of petty kings, and from whom some of the best 
families in the land with any thing like Irish names claim descent, and particularly 
those with the prefix of the ‘““O” or the “ Mac.’’ When this race arrived in Ireland 
I cannot tell, but it was some time prior to the Christian era. It is said they came 
from the coast of Spain, where they had long remained after their eastern emigration. 
Upon the site of what is believed to be the ancient Brigantium, now the entrance 
to the united harbours of Corunna and Ferrol, stands the great lighthouse known 
to all ships passing through the Bay of Biscay. Within this modern structure still 
exists the celebrated ‘“ Pharos of Hercules,” which I investigated and described 
many years ago. That tower, it was said in metaphorical language, commanded a 
view of Ireland, and as such became the theme of Irish poems and legends. Cer- 
tain it is that sailing north or north-westward from it the ships of the sons of 
Milesius and their followers could have reached Ireland without much coasting. If 
the story of Breogan’s Tower is true, then it must have been erected in the time 
of lime-and-mortar building, and that is during the Roman occupation of Iberia 
and Gaul. How many thousands, rank and file, of these Spanish Milesians came 
here in their six or eight galleys and tried the fortunes of war from “the summit 
of the ninth wave from the shore ” and conquered the entire Dannan, Firbolg, and 
Femorian population, I am unable to give the slightest inkling of, no more than 
I can of the so-called Phoenician intercourse with this country. Perhaps without 
oing into the fanciful descriptions of the “Battle of Ventry Harbour,” or the 
Pouthern conquest of Ireland by the Iberian Milesians, we may find some more 
trustworthy illustrations of Spanish dwellings in the architecture of the town of 
Galway, and some picturesque representatives in the lithe upright figures and raven- 
