Its hero is Lug, the Irish reflex of a Celtic god whose cult is reflected in continental placenames and in Caesar's description of the Gaulish Mercurius. The battle was treated as historical by the monastic scholars and they included it in their synthesis of Irish and world history. Bres The anti-hero, so to speak, of 'The Battle of Mag Tuired' is Bres. His birth is of the heroic kind, but he fails as a king. The relationship between a king and his subjects, and between a man and his kindred, are illuminated in the account of Bres's career.
Biblical influence is also discernible.
The biography of Cormac mac Airt presents him as the ideal king. The notion that Ireland was a goddess and that the king was her spouse is pervasive in early Irish literature and survived in the political literature of Gaelic Ireland down to the eighteenth century. The myth of the king and the goddess was used as a vehicle for political propaganda by certain powerful dynasties. Cormac mac Airt's Adventure in the Otherworld' is a rich source for the ideology of kingship in early Ireland. Rees and Rees, Celtic Heritage , Chap.