Balor

In the Celtic Mythology Irish, Balor is the king of the people of the Fomoires , these beings inhuman, hideous and démoniaques which are the personification of chaos and the destruction. They are in war against all, and in particular against the Tuatha Dé Danann (“people of the goddess Dana”), the gods of the Ireland. His wife is Cethlenn.

According to the accounts, it is a one-eyed or cyclopean giant of which the eye paralyzes or strikes down whole armies. He lives on the island of Tory, where he saw, its single closed eye, in permanent fear to see to achieve a prophecy according to which he must die with the hand of his grandson. In spite of her efforts to delay this end by holding Ethne, his/her daughter, with the variation of the men, this one finds herself pregnant and gives rise to triplets. Balor ordered to throw them to the sea but one of them survives: it is the god Lug.

However, in the combat, he asks four men to raise the eyelid with lances to him, to be able to destroy his enemies. At the time of Cath Maighe Tuireadh (the Battle of Mag Tured , anglicized in Moytura), the god Lug comes to him, charmer and chatterer, so that Balor makes a point of seeing its head. As soon as the eyelid is raised, it receives a stone of sling which tears off the ocular sphere to him and projects it among his/her friends, Fomoire. It of keep silent involuntarily thousands, ensuring the victory of its enemies, the Tuatha Die Danann.

Balor incarnates the negative forces of the evil, whose capacity can be held in failure only by the force-light of Lug, itself relative of Balor.

In the Welsh account of Kulhwch and olwen , its name is Yspadadden Penkawr .

Balor is to be brought closer to the Cyclops of the Greek Mythologie. It could be also the monster Anguipède of the Gallic sculptor.

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