The decisive battle of Irish myth's Mythological Cycle, fought at Mag Tuired between the Tuatha De Danann, led by the half-Fomorian Lugh, and the Fomorians under the deposed king Bres and the giant Balor of the Evil Eye. The battle follows the deposing of Bres for his misrule and the return of Nuada to kingship once a working arm, first of silver and then of flesh, let him rule again without physical blemish. Lugh kills Balor with a sling stone through his baleful eye, ending Fomorian domination and confirming the Tuatha De Danann's mastery of Ireland. The tale survives chiefly in the medieval Irish text Cath Maige Tuired, with the wider background of the Tuatha De Danann's arrival summarized separately in the Lebor Gabala Erenn.
Facts
History
Historical NoteBefore the final confrontation, the Dagda is sent to spy in the Fomorian camp and is fed an enormous porridge as an insult meant to incapacitate him, which he eats entirely with a ladle large enough for a man and woman to lie in together, an episode of grotesque comic excess that precedes the battle's serious business. 1 Historical NoteNuada's silver arm, fashioned by the physician god Dian Cecht after his hand is severed in the First Battle of Mag Tuired, is later replaced by a working arm of flesh grown by Dian Cecht's own son Miach, a healing so complete that Dian Cecht kills his son out of jealousy at being outdone. 1 Historical NoteThe tale makes no claim to historical event; Moytirra in County Sligo is a real place onto which the legendary battle was mapped 3 Scholarship and Forensics
Scholarly NoteScholars point to the tale's account of the smith Goibniu, the wright Luchta and the brazier Credne working through the night to replace broken spearheads and shafts as fast as the Fomorians could break them as an early instance of the divine artisan motif recurring across Irish myth, magical production outpacing any ordinary craft. 1 Scholarly NoteScholars read the tale's political shape, a native dynasty overthrown by a half-foreign usurper and then restored, as inflected by medieval Irish concerns with legitimate kingship and physical wholeness as a qualification to rule, a real early Irish legal principle, rather than as a straightforward record of unchanged pre-Christian myth. 3 Meaning
Central MotifA king disqualified from rule by physical blemish and restored once healed; the deposing of a tyrannical king; the destruction of a monstrous eye 1 Controversy
Point in DisputeScholars disagree over how much of Cath Maige Tuired's surviving text, compiled in its present form centuries after an earlier medieval original now lost, reflects an intact pre-Christian narrative core against how much reflects reworking by the Christian scribes who transmitted it, a question that recurs across the wider Mythological Cycle. 1 Sources
Primary SourceCath Maige Tuired, the medieval Irish tale, with the Tuatha De Danann's wider background summarized separately in the Lebor Gabala Erenn 1 Learn More
Bres, Misrule, and the Return of Nuada
When Nuada, king of the Tuatha De Danann, lost his hand in the First Battle of Mag Tuired against the Fir Bolg, the law of the Tuatha De Danann barred a physically blemished man from kingship, and Bres, son of a Tuatha De Danann woman and a Fomorian father, was chosen to rule in his place as a gesture of reconciliation between the two peoples. Bres proved a disastrous king: tradition remembers him for withholding the hospitality owed to poets and nobles, imposing tribute on the Tuatha De Danann on behalf of his Fomorian kin, and reducing chieftains to menial labor, until the satirist Cairbre composed a verse of ridicule against him so effective that Bres's face broke out in blemishes of its own, disqualifying him under the same rule that had once excluded Nuada.
Deposed, Bres fled to his father's people, the Fomorians, and sought their help to retake the kingship by force, gathering an army under the sea god Indech and the giant Balor of the Evil Eye. Meanwhile Nuada, now fitted with a working arm of silver made by the physician Dian Cecht, and restored further afterward by Dian Cecht's son Miach, was eligible to rule again, and stepped aside a second time when a young warrior named Lugh arrived at the Tuatha De Danann's court and proved himself master of every skill demanded of him, taking command in preparation for the coming battle.
Lugh's Sling Stone and Balor's Eye
The armies met at Mag Tuired, and the battle is remembered in the surviving text as a contest of matched champions and magical resource as much as of open combat: the physician Dian Cecht and his children tended the Tuatha De Danann's wounded at a healing well that returned fallen warriors to the fight, while the Fomorian smiths worked to keep pace with Tuatha De Danann weapons. Balor, the Fomorian giant, carried a single baleful eye whose lid took several men to lift and which killed or withered whatever it looked upon, a weapon turned against his own people in earlier tellings before being wielded at Mag Tuired itself.
Lugh, despite instructions to stay out of the fighting because of his value as craftsman and leader rather than combatant, entered the battle as Balor's eye was being uncovered and struck it with a stone from his sling, driving the eye out through the back of Balor's head so that its gaze fell instead on the Fomorian ranks behind him. Balor's death broke the Fomorian line, and the Tuatha De Danann's victory ended Fomorian domination of Ireland and confirmed Lugh, rather than the restored Nuada, as the people's effective leader for the remainder of the tale. The tale belongs to Ireland's Mythological Cycle and makes no claim to historical event; Moytirra, the plain in County Sligo, is a real place onto which the legendary battle was mapped.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
The Second Battle of Mag Tuired is the central mythic battle of the Tuatha De Danann against the Fomorians.
Lugh, Deities At the second battle of Mag Tuired, Lugh slays his own tyrant grandfather, Balor of the baleful eye, casting a sling stone through his destroying gaze.
Lugh, Deities Lugh, the half-Fomorian leader of the Tuatha De Danann, kills Balor with a sling stone.
Nuada, Deities Nuada returns to kingship once a working arm lets him rule again without blemish.
In the Cath Maige Tuired, the Morrigan aids the Tuatha De Danann against the Fomorians.
Belongs to Tradition
The Second Battle of Mag Tuired belongs to Celtic Paganism, its own tradition field, and is preserved in the Lebor Gabala Erenn tradition.
Originated In
Sources
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