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Gathelus


According to an Irish and Scottish medieval tradition, Goídel Glas (Latinised as Gaithelus) is the creator of the Goidelic languages and the eponymous ancestor of the Gaels.

The tradition can be traced to the 11th-century Lebor Gabála Érenn (LGE). A Scottish variant is due to John of Fordun (d. 1384).

The narrative in the Lebor Gabála Érenn is a mythological account of the origin of the Gaels as the descendants of the Scythian prince Fénius Farsaid, one of seventy-two chieftains who built the Tower of Babel. Goídel Glas was the son of Nel (son of Fénius) and Scota (daughter of a Pharaoh of Egypt). Goídel Glas is credited with the creation of Gaelic (proto-Irish language) from the original seventy-two languages that arose at the time of the confusion of tongues. His descendants, the Gaels, undergo a series of trials and tribulations that are clearly modelled on those of the Israelites in the Old Testament. They flourish in Egypt at the time of Moses and leave during the Exodus; they wander the world for 440 years before eventually settling in the Iberian Peninsula. There, Goídel's descendant Breogán founds a city called Brigantia, and builds a tower from the top of which his son Íth glimpses Ireland. Brigantia possibly refers to Bragança, in Portugal, or perhaps Corunna, in Galicia, (then known as Brigantium), whilst Breogán's tower might have been based on the Tower of Hercules, which was built at Corunna by the Romans.


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