The Tuatha De Danann king, Nuada, lost his hand in this battle, and obtained the name of Nuada of the Silver Hand,[36] his artificer, Credne Cert, having made a silver hand for him with joints.  It is probable the latter acquisition was the work of Mioch, the son of Diancecht, Nuada’s physician, as there is a tradition that he “took off the hand and infused feeling and motion into every joint and finger of it, as if it were a natural hand.”  We may doubt the “feeling,” but it was probably suggested by the “motion,” and the fact that, in those ages, every act of more than ordinary skill was attributed to supernatural causes, though effected through human agents.  Perhaps even, in the enlightened nineteenth century, we might not be much the worse for the pious belief, less the pagan cause to which it was attributed.  It should be observed here, that the Brehon Laws were probably then in force; for the “blemish” of the monarch appears to have deprived him of his dignity, at least until the silver hand could satisfy for the defective limb.  The Four Masters tell us briefly that the Tuatha De Dananns gave the sovereignty to Breas, son of Ealathan, “while the hand of Nuada was under cure,” and mentions that Breas resigned the kingdom to him in the seventh year after the cure of his hand.

A more detailed account of this affair may be found in one of our ancient historic tales, of the class called Catha or Battles, which Professor O’Curry pronounces to be “almost the earliest event upon the record of which we may place sure reliance."[37] It would appear that there were two battles between the Firbolgs and Tuatha De Dananns, and that, in the last of these, Nuada was slain.  According to this ancient tract, when the Firbolg king heard of the arrival of the invaders, he sent a warrior named Sreng to reconnoitre their camp.  The Tuatha De Dananns were as skilled in war as in magic; they had sentinels carefully posted, and their videttes were as much on the alert as a Wellington or a Napier could desire.  The champion Breas was sent forward to meet the stranger.  As they approached, each raised his shield, and cautiously surveyed his opponent from above the protecting aegis.  Breas was the first to speak.  The mother-tongue was as dear then as now, and Sreng was charmed to hear himself addressed in his own language, which, equally dear to the exiled Nemedian chiefs, had been preserved by them in their long wanderings through northern Europe.  An examination of each others armour next took place.  Sreng was armed with “two heavy, thick, pointless, but sharply rounded spears;” while Breas carried “two beautifully shaped, thin, slender, long, sharp-pointed spears."[38] Perhaps the one bore a spear of the same class of heavy flint weapons of which we give an illustration, and the other the lighter and more graceful sword, of which many specimens may be seen in the collection of the Royal Irish Academy.  Breas then proposed that they should divide the island between the two parties; and after exchanging spears and promises of mutual friendship, each returned to his own camp.