There was danger for ships that went near that island, for the Fomor
would come out and take them. And some say the sons of Nemed in the old
time, before the Firbolgs were in Ireland, passed near it in their
ships, and what they saw was a tower of glass in the middle of the sea,
and on the tower something that had the appearance of men, and they went
against it with Druid spells to attack it. And the Fomor worked against
them with Druid spells of their own; and the sons of Nemed attacked the
tower, and it vanished, and they thought it was destroyed. But a great
wave rose over them then, and all their ships went down and all that
were in them.
And the tower was there as it was before, and Balor living in it. And it
is the reason he was called "of the Evil Eye," there was a power of
death in one of his eyes, so that no person could look at it and live.
It is the way it got that power, he was passing one time by a house
where his father's Druids were making spells of death, and the window
being open he looked in, and the smoke of the poisonous spells was
rising up, and it went into his eye. And from that time he had to keep
it closed unless he wanted to be the death of some enemy, and then the
men that were with him would lift the eyelid with a ring of ivory.
Now a Druid foretold one time that it was by his own grandson he would
get his death. And he had at that time but one child, a daughter whose
name was Ethlinn; and when he heard what the Druid said, he shut her up
in the tower on the island.
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