Book of Invasions: The Lebor Gabála Érenn Explained

The medieval Irish history of the island's settlement by wave after wave of peoples, from a woman before the Flood to the gods and the Gaels.

The Lebor Gabála Érenn is an eleventh-century collection of Irish poems and prose that gives Ireland a history back to Creation, told as six waves of settlers ending with the Gaels.

The Lebor Gabála Érenn, the Book of the Taking of Ireland, better known as the Book of Invasions, is a collection of poems and prose compiled by Irish Christian scholars in the eleventh century. It tries to give Ireland a history reaching back to Creation, fitting native myths into the framework of the Bible.

It describes six waves of settlers. First comes Cessair, a granddaughter of Noah, whose party dies in the Flood, except for Fintan, who survives by turning into a salmon and other animals and lives for thousands of years. Then come Partholón and his people, wiped out by plague; Nemed and his people, oppressed by the Fomorians; the Fir Bolg; the Tuatha Dé Danann, who arrive in dark clouds with their four treasures; and finally the Milesians, the sons of Míl, ancestors of the Gaels.

Much of the book is genealogy and chronology, but it is threaded with strange details: a battle against the Fomorians in which their tower on Tory Island is stormed, a darkness over the sun for three days, a sea that rises against invaders. The Fomorians appear repeatedly as a hostile race already present in Ireland.

Scholars treat the Lebor Gabála as learned pseudo-history, modeled on biblical and classical works, that preserves real fragments of pre-Christian myth. Its structure of successive peoples, a flood and a survivor who remembers everything gives it an appeal for anyone interested in lost ages. It also survives in many manuscripts and versions, which do not always agree, so any retelling is a choice among variants.