Balor had a consort Cethlenn, whose venom killed Dagda.  His one eye had become evil by contact with the poisonous fumes of a concoction which his father’s Druids were preparing.  The eyelid required four men to raise it, when his evil eye destroyed all on whom its glance fell.  In this way Balor would have slain Lug at Mag-tured, but the god at once struck the eye with a sling-stone and slew him.[191] Balor, like the Greek Medusa, is perhaps a personification of the evil eye, so much feared by the Celts.  Healthful influences and magical charms avert it; hence Lug, a beneficent god, destroys Balor’s maleficence.

Tethra, with Balor and Elatha, ruled over Erin at the coming of the Tuatha De Danann.  From a phrase used in the story of Connla’s visit to Elysium, “Thou art a hero of the men of Tethra,” M. D’Arbois assumes that Tethra was ruler of Elysium, which he makes one with the land of the dead.  The passage, however, bears a different interpretation, and though a Fomorian, Tethra, a god of war, might be regarded as lord of all warriors.[192] Elysium was not the land of the dead, and when M. D’Arbois equates Tethra with Kronos, who after his defeat became ruler of a land of dead heroes, the analogy, like other analogies with Greek mythology, is misleading.  He also equates Bres, as temporary king of the Tuatha De Danann, with Kronos, king of heaven in the age of gold.  Kronos, again, slain by Zeus, is parallel to Balor slain by his grandson Lug.  Tethra, Bres, and Balor are thus separate fragments of one god equivalent to Kronos.[193] Yet their personalities are quite distinct.  Each race works out its mythology for itself, and, while parallels are inevitable, we should not allow these to override the actual myths as they have come down to us.

Professor Rh[^y]s makes Bile, ancestor of the Milesians who came from Spain, a Goidelic counterpart of the Gaulish Dispater, lord of the dead, from whom the Gauls claimed descent.  But Bile, neither a Fomorian nor of the Tuatha De Danann, is an imaginary and shadowy creation.  Bile is next equated with a Brythonic Beli, assumed to be consort of Don, whose family are equivalent to the Tuatha De Danann.[194] Beli was a mythic king whose reign was a kind of golden age, and if he was father of Don’s children, which is doubtful, Bile would then be father of the Tuatha De Danann.  But he is ancestor of the Milesians, their opponents according to the annalists.  Beli is also equated with Elatha, and since Don, reputed consort of Beli, was grandmother of Llew, equated with Irish Lug, grandson of Balor, Balor is equivalent to Beli, whose name is regarded by Professor Rh[^y]s as related etymologically to Balor’s.[195] Bile, Balor, and Elatha are thus Goidelic equivalents of the shadowy Beli.  But they also are quite distinct personalities, nor are they ever hinted at as ancestral gods of the Celts, or gods of a gloomy underworld.  In Celtic belief the underworld was probably a fertile region and a place of light, nor were its gods harmful and evil, as Balor was.