Balor of the Evil Eye

In the cold depths beneath the western sea, in the realm of Tory Island where the waves crashed endlessly against black rocks, there ruled the most feared of all the Fomorian kings. His name was Balor, and he was known throughout both the mortal world and the otherworld as Balor of the Evil Eye, Balor of the Poisonous Glance, Balor whose very gaze could bring death to anything that lived.

Balor had not always been a monster. In his youth, he had been merely a prince of the Fomorians, tall and strong like others of his ancient race. But the seed of his terrible power had been planted by his own curiosity and his desire for forbidden knowledge.

It happened that when Balor was still a young man, his father’s druids were preparing a great magical working. They had gathered rare herbs from the four corners of the world and were brewing them in a massive cauldron over a fire that had burned for seven years without going out. The potion they were making was intended to give their king the power to see into the future and know the thoughts of his enemies.

But the druids had warned that the vapors rising from the cauldron were deadly poison. “Let no living thing breathe these fumes,” they commanded, “for they carry the concentrated essence of death itself. Even to smell them would bring doom.”

Balor, however, was young and proud, and he thought the druids were being overly cautious. “How dangerous can mere vapors be?” he said to himself. “I am a prince of the Fomorians. Surely I can withstand what would kill a lesser being.”

Against all warnings, Balor climbed to a high window overlooking the cauldron room. He wanted to see this great magic being performed, and he was confident that he could watch safely from a distance. But as he peered through the window, a gust of wind caught the poisonous vapors and blew them directly into his face.

The moment the deadly fumes touched his eyes, Balor screamed in agony. The poison burned like acid, and he clapped his hands over his face, falling back from the window. When the pain finally subsided and he dared to remove his hands, he found that his sight had changed forever.

His left eye had become clouded and grey, completely blind. But his right eye… his right eye had become something terrible indeed. It had grown to enormous size, and when he looked at anything with that eye fully open, the thing would wither and die instantly.

The first time Balor tested his new power, he looked upon a healthy oak tree that stood outside his father’s hall. The moment his gaze fell upon it, the tree blackened and crumbled to ash. When a curious raven landed nearby, one glance from Balor’s eye reduced the bird to a handful of feathers that scattered in the wind.

“What have I become?” Balor cried in horror. But there was no undoing what had been done. The poison had changed him permanently, and he would carry the curse of the Evil Eye for the rest of his days.

As years passed, Balor learned to control his terrible power to some degree. He could keep his eyelid closed most of the time, preventing accidental deaths. But the effort of keeping such a large eye shut was enormous, and eventually, it took four strong men to lift his eyelid when he needed to use his deadly gaze in battle.

Despite the horror of his curse, Balor found that it brought him power. Other Fomorians feared him, enemies fled before him, and he rose to become the most feared king in Fomorian history. He ruled from his fortress on Tory Island, surrounded by the endless sea, commanding legions of monstrous warriors.

But power could not ease his mind, for Balor lived in constant fear of a prophecy. The same druids who had brewed the poison had also foretold his doom: “You will be killed by your own grandson,” they told him. “A child of your blood will be your destruction.”

This prophecy haunted Balor’s dreams and poisoned his waking hours. He began to see threats everywhere, and he resolved that he would cheat fate by ensuring he had no grandchildren. When his daughter Ethniu grew to be a beautiful young woman, Balor imprisoned her in a crystal tower on Tory Island, guarded by twelve fierce women warriors, and decreed that she must never see or speak to any man.

The tower was built on the highest point of the island, its walls as smooth as glass and impossible to climb. Only one narrow window looked out over the sea, and through this window, Ethniu could see the world but never reach it. Her guards were instructed to kill any man who even approached the island, and Balor believed he had made it impossible for his daughter to ever bear a child.

For many years, this imprisonment continued. Ethniu grew from a girl into a woman in her crystal prison, knowing nothing of love or companionship save the cold loyalty of her guards. She was the loneliest person in all of Ireland, and her sighs were so full of sorrow that they say the very winds carried them across the sea and made the hearts of poets weep.

But fate is not so easily cheated, and love will find a way even through the strongest prison. Cian of the Tuatha Dé Danann, one of the greatest heroes of the divine race, had heard tales of the beautiful woman imprisoned on Tory Island. Driven by pity for her plight and enchanted by descriptions of her beauty, he determined to rescue her.

Using all his skill in magic and shape-changing, Cian disguised himself as a woman and approached Tory Island. The guards, seeing what appeared to be a harmless female refugee seeking shelter, allowed him to land and brought him before Ethniu.

The moment Cian and Ethniu looked upon each other, they fell deeply in love. Despite the danger, despite Balor’s guards, despite the terrible prophecy, their love was stronger than fear. In secret meetings within the crystal tower, they became lovers and eventually husband and wife in all but name.

When Ethniu gave birth to triplets – three sons born of the union between Fomorian and Tuatha Dé Danann – her guards were terrified. They knew that Balor would blame them for allowing this to happen, and in their fear, they sent word to their king immediately.

Balor’s rage when he learned of his daughter’s children was terrible to behold. The very air around him crackled with dark energy, and his Evil Eye blazed so fiercely that the walls of his throne room began to crack. “Bring me the children,” he commanded in a voice like grinding stone. “Bring them to me now!”

When the three infant boys were brought before him, Balor looked upon them with his normal eye and saw that they were beautiful, healthy children who showed the mixed heritage of both divine races. But the prophecy rang in his mind: one of these children, or their children in turn, would be his doom.

“Take them to the highest cliff on the island,” he ordered his guards. “Cast them into the sea. Let the waves claim them, and let the prophecy die with them.”

The guards, terrified of their king’s wrath, took the three babies and carried them to the cliff. But as they prepared to throw the children into the churning waters below, one of the babies – the youngest and smallest – began to glow with an inner light. This was Lugh, and even as an infant, his divine nature was too strong to be easily destroyed.

The wind, as if commanded by the child’s own power, caught him up and carried him safely away from the island, across the water to the mainland where he was found and raised by foster parents. The other two babies were not so fortunate, and they vanished beneath the waves.

But Balor knew nothing of this miraculous rescue. He believed all three children were dead, and he thought he had cheated the prophecy. For many years, he lived in relative peace, convinced that he had outsmarted fate itself.

How wrong he was would only become clear years later, when a young man of extraordinary beauty and power came to challenge the might of the Fomorians. This was Lugh, grown to manhood, master of all arts and leader of the Tuatha Dé Danann. And though neither grandfather nor grandson knew it at first, the prophecy was already beginning to fulfill itself.

The final confrontation came during the Second Battle of Mag Tuired, when Balor led the Fomorian host against the forces of light and order. As the battle raged, Balor’s Evil Eye swept across the battlefield, killing hundreds with each glance. The Tuatha Dé Danann began to give ground before this terrible weapon.

It was then that Lugh made his move. Using all his divine speed and skill, he positioned himself with his sling behind Balor’s massive form. “Grandfather!” he called out across the din of battle. “Turn and face your doom!”

As Balor turned and his eyelid began to rise, Lugh let fly with a stone from his sling. The projectile, guided by divine power and prophetic fate, struck the Evil Eye just as it opened. The stone passed through the eye and out the back of Balor’s skull, and the great Fomorian king fell dead, his reign of terror ended at last.

But even in death, Balor’s eye was dangerous. Where it fell to earth, the ground was poisoned and nothing would grow for generations. The malice and fear that had driven him in life lingered even after his spirit had departed.

The death of Balor marked the end of the Fomorians’ power over Ireland and the beginning of the golden age of the Tuatha Dé Danann. But the tale of Balor of the Evil Eye became a warning told through the generations: that those who seek power through fear and cruelty will ultimately destroy themselves, and that no one, no matter how mighty, can escape the fate that awaits them.

For in trying so desperately to avoid the prophecy, Balor had created the very circumstances that made it come true. His cruelty to his daughter led her to love his enemy, his attempt to murder his grandsons led to one of them being saved and raised to be his greatest foe, and his reliance on fear and power rather than love and wisdom ensured that when his time came, he would face it alone and friendless.

The Evil Eye that he thought was his greatest strength became the instrument of his doom, and the grandson he tried to kill became the hero who would save Ireland from darkness. In the end, Balor’s story taught that true sight comes not from the power to destroy, but from the wisdom to see that love is stronger than fear, and that those who choose cruelty over kindness write their own doom in the very deeds they do.