Eire and the Aryan Connection

Ireland, Erin, Eireann or Eire represents probably the earliest place of settlement of the invading Aryan tribes from the east.
Irish mythology makes reference to five invasions. They are as follows:

The coming of the Partholan into Ireland.

The coming of the Nemed into Ireland.

The coming of the Firbolgs into Ireland.

The invasion of the Tuatha De Danaan.[The folk of the god whose mother is Dana].

The invasion of the Milesians[Sons of Miled] and the conquest of the Tuatha De Danaan.

We know that at least some of these if not all of the invading peoples were of Aryan stock.
As a minimum the Milesians are regarded as the ancestors of the Irish Gaels and the Tuatha De Danaan are widely referred to as the deities of the Irish people. In Irish mythology myth and history seem to blend and mortals and immortals do not appear to have such clear dividing lines between them as in say the Teutonic mythology.

The sciences of comparative linguistics, mythology and modern genetic testing all point to the Irish people having been in possession of Ireland from the earliest days of the Aryan dispersal.
It is conceiveable that the Aryans did not arrive in Ireland all at the same time but came in waves of immigration and possibly using different routes. Mythology tells us that the Milesians came by the way of Spain.

Ulick J. Bourke gives abundant linguiistical evidence in his Aryan Origin of the Gaelic Race and Language for the great antiquity of the Irish tongue putting it on a par with Sanskrit, Greek and Latin.

He has this to say about the various invasions:
"All these different migrations had come forth from the Keltic family home; and all spoke the same language. All were Aryan. Thus the ancient annals of Ireland accord most wonderfully with the teaching of the science of comparative philology."

One has only to look at the name or names of Ireland itself to see this ancient Aryan connection.

"For those who for whatever reason wish to resist the idea that the Celtic mythology and religion[as well as culture] is essentially based on Indo-European roots, it might be noted that the first element in the names Ire-land and Ira-n are the same liguistically, and both are related to the Arya-ns of India. Thus the great span of Indo-European culture, from the middle of Asia to the westernmost islands of Europe, can be seen in its full expanse from ancient times."
[Edred Thorsson , aka Dr Stephen Edred Flowers, The Book of Ogham]

This theme is further emphasised by Peter Berresford Ellis, author of various books on Celtic mythology, history and culture, "To demonstrate some of the similarities of vocabulary between Old Irish and Sanskrit, we may refer to the following: arya[freeman] in Sanskrit, from which that much maligned word Aryan comes from. In Old Irish, the cognate is aire meaning "a noble"." [The Mammoth Book of Celtic Myths and Legends].

In addition to the Aryan connection with the name Ire-land there is also the equally explicit connection with Er-in, Eire, Eireann[pronounced `Aryan`. The Ar Aryan prefix is cognate with Ir and Er and many examples of such connections may be found in other Indo-European languages. What they have in common is their meaning-Land of the Aryans, which is linguistically the same as Aryavarta[Sanskrit] or Iran/Eran.

The Aryan connection may also found in the names of some of the ancient Irish deities, eg Eremon. The name of this Irish god is cognate with Ariomanus a god from Celtic Gaul which in turn is cognate with the Sankrit Aryaman and the Iranian airyaman.[J.P. Mallory and D.Q. Adams, The Oxford Introdution to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European World].

According to Irish mythology Eremon was one of three Milesian leaders who set out for the conquest of Ireland. Initially he occupied the north but after a war he became victorious and ruled the whole of Ireland from the sacred centre of Tara.
Prior to this Ireland at one time was ruled by three Danaan kings. The wife of one of these kings was called Eriu. Her name has persisted through the course of time and in the dative form her name, Erinn is now a poetic name for Ireland or Eire.
Professor L. Austine Waddell writes: "And Ireland of the Irish-Scots has also its "Holy Isles", with very ancient remains, including a magnificent "prehistoric" fort of cyclopean masonry in the Hitt-ite style, in Galway Bay, and also significantly named "Aran" or "Arran", which like the name "Erin" and "Ir-land", in series with the "Airy-ana" or "Ir-an" or "Land of the Aryans" of the ancient Sun-worsipping Aryans in the Orient." [The Phoenician Origin of Britons, Scots and Anglo-Saxons].