Balor

Balor, Balar, Bolar. Often called Balor of the Evil or Baleful Eye. A king of the Fomorians who had an evil or basilisk eye, never opened except on the battlefield, when four men were needed to lift the eyelid. If an army looked at the eye that army was rendered powerless. Balor acquired the terrible eye when as a child he saw his father's druids brewing charms. When such theories were in fashion, he was thought to be the sun deity of the Celts. Often compared with the Welsh Ysbaddaden Bencawr. Brian Ó Cuív, ‘Lugh Lámhfhada and the Death of Balar Ua Néid’, Celtica, 2 (1954), 64–6.

As he was the grandson of Néit, Balor has the occasional patronymic Ua Néit. He is sometimes credited with a wife, the loathsome Caitlín or Céthlionn of the crooked tooth. His daughter was Eithne, who mated with Cian to produce the great hero Lug Lámfhota. As Balor's death was prophesied to come at the hands of his grandson, he had a lifelong conflict with Lug, which finds its culmination in Cath Maige Tuired [The (Second) Battle of Mag Tuired], where the two meet in combat. In some versions Lug blinds Balor's eye with a spear made by Goibniu, the craft god. In other versions Lug decapitates Balor and places the severed head on a pike, using the still potent eye to split rocks. In some stories Balor was a bandit or pirate on Tory Island. From this base he stole the fairy cow Glas Ghaibhleann from its owner, Gaibhlín.

The eminent folklorist A. H. Krappe once argued that the story of Balor and Lug represented the conflict between the Old Year or Winter against the New Year; see Balor With the Evil Eye (New York, 1927).