Partholón

In Irish mythology Parthol?n was the leader of the second group of people to settle in Ireland, the first to arrive after the biblical Flood. They arrived in 2680 BC according to the chronology of the Annals of the Four Masters, 2061 BC according to Seathr?n C?itinn's chronology, and the time of Abraham according to Irish synchronic historians.

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The earliest surviving reference to Parthol?n's settlement is in the Historia Brittonum, a 9th century British Latin compilation attributed to one Nennius. Here, "Partolomus" is said to have come to Ireland with a thousand followers, who multiplied until there were four thousand, and then all died of plague in a single week.

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The Irish Lebor Gab?la ?renn (Book of Invasions), compliled in the 11th century, tells us more. Parthol?n was the son of Sera, son of Sru, a descendant of Magog, son of Japheth, son of Noah. He came to Ireland from Sicily by way of Greece, Cappadocia, Gothia and Spain, and arrived three hundred, or three hundred and twelve, years after the flood, on 14 May, a Tuesday, landing at Inber Sc?ne (Kenmare in West Kerry). His landing is synchronised with Abraham's sixtieth year. With him were his wife, Dalgnat, and their three sons, Sl?ine, Rudraige (1) and Laiglinne, and their wives Nerba, Cichba and Cerbnad, and a thousand followers.

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Seathr?n C?itinn's 17th century compilation Foras Feasa ar ?rinn, gives Parthol?n a slightly different backstory. He was the son of Sera, the king of Greece, and fled his homeland after murdering his father and mother. He lost his left eye in the attack on his parents. He and his followers set off from Greece, sailed via Sicily, round Spain, and arrived in Ireland from the west, having travelled for seven years.

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At the time of Parthol?n's arrival there were only three lakes, nine rivers and one plain in Ireland. He cleared four more plains, and seven more lakes erupted from the ground. Three years after arriving, Parthol?n defeated the Fomorians, led by C?ocal, at Magh Ithe, in the first battle fought in Ireland.

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A poem in the Lebor Gab?la, expanded on by C?itinn, tells how Parthol?n and his wife lived on an island in the middle of Lough Erne. Once, while Parthol?n was out touring his domain, his wife, Delgnat, seduced a servant, Topa. Afterwards they drank from Parthol?n's ale, which could only be drunk through a golden tube. Parthol?n discovered the affair when he drank his ale and recognised the taste of Delgnat's and Topa's mouths on the tube. In anger he killed Topa, and his wife's dog. But Delgnat was unrepentant and insisted that Parthol?n himself was to blame, as leaving them alone together was like leaving honey before a woman, milk before a cat, edged tools before a craftsman or meat before a child and expecting them not to take advantage. This is recorded as the first adultery and the first jealousy in Ireland. The island they lived on was named Inis Saimera after Saimer, Dalgnat's dog.

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According to the Lebor Gab?la, Parthol?n and his followers, five thousand men and four thousand women, died of plague in a single week, on Senmag, the "old plain", near modern Tallaght. Later sources say Parthol?n died there after thirty years in Ireland, and the rest of his people died there of plague, 120 years later in the month of May. But one man survived: Tuan, son of Parthol?n's brother Starn. Through a series of animal transformations he survived through the centuries to be reborn as the son of an chieftain named Cairell in the time of Colm Cille (6th century). He remembered all he had seen, and thus Parthol?n's story was preserved.

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The story seems to reflect Irish prehistory, in broad outline at least. Parthol?n's people brought ploughs and oxen, dairy farming, husbandry, houses and ale, and are said to have buried their dead in "long graves" in "stone heaps". This corresponds with the Neolithic farmers who arrived in Ireland around the 3rd millennium BC and buried their dead in long barrows derived from the rock-cut tombs of Sicily and southern Italy. Although this is said to be the first settlement after the Flood, the Fomorians were already there, living on fish and fowl like the hunter-gatherers of the Mesolithic. However the name 'Parthol?n' is not native and is probably a late addition, borrowed from a 'Bartholomaeus' who appears in the Christian pseudohistories of St. Jerome and Isidore of Seville.

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Irish mythology: The mythology of pre-Christian Ireland did not entirely survive the conversion to Christianity, but much of it was preserved, shorn of its religious meanings, in medieval Irish literature, which represents the most extensive and best preserved of all the branches of Celtic mythology. Although many o...

Ireland: :This page is about the island of Ireland. For the political territories on the island, see Republic of Ireland, Northern Ireland and the History section below....

Flood: A flood (in Old English flod, a word common to Teutonic languages; compare German Flut, Dutch vloed from the same root as is seen in flow, float) is an overflow of water, an expanse of water submerging land, a deluge. In the sense of "flowing water", the word is applied to the inflow of the tide, a...