The name signifies a place where a number of persons who died of the plague were interred together; and here the Annals of the Four Masters tells us that nine thousand of Partholan's people died in one week, after they had been three hundred years in Ireland.[31] The third "taking" of Ireland was that of Nemedh.

He came, according to the Annals,[32] A.M.2859, and erected forts and cleared plains, as his predecessors had done.

His people were also afflicted by plague, and appeared to have had occupation enough to bury their dead, and to fight with the "Fomorians in general," an unpleasantly pugilistic race, who, according to the Annals of Clonmacnois, "were a sept descended from Cham, the sonne of Noeh, and lived by pyracie and spoile of other nations, and were in those days very troublesome to the whole world."[33] The few Nemedians who escaped alive after their great battle with the Fomorians, fled into the interior of the island.

Three bands were said to have emigrated with their respective captains.

One party wandered into the north of Europe, and are believed to have been the progenitors of the Tuatha De Dananns; others made their way to Greece, where they were enslaved, and obtained the name of Firbolgs, or bagmen, from the leathern bags which they were compelled to carry; and the third section sought refuge in the north of England, which is said to have obtained its name of Briton from their leader, Briotan Maol.[34] The fourth immigration is that of the Firbolgs; and it is remarkable how early the love of country is manifested in the Irish race, since we find those who once inhabited its green plains still anxious to return, whether their emigration proved prosperous, as to the Tuatha De Dananns, or painful, as to the Firbolgs.
According to the _Annals of Clonmacnois, Keating_, and the _Leabhar-Gabhala_, the Firbolgs divided the island into five provinces, governed by five brothers, the sons of Dela Mac Loich:--"Slane, the eldest brother, had the province of Leynster for his part, which containeth from Inver Colpe, that is to say, where the river Boyne entereth into the sea, now called in Irish Drogheda, to the meeting of the three waters, by Waterford, where the three rivers, Suyre, Ffeoir, and Barrow, do meet and run together into the sea.