Early Irish Myths and Sagas by Jeffrey Gantz Read Free Book Online

second section, Echu and Ailill are the rival claimants, Ailill’s love-sickness recalling that of Gilvaethwy in ‘Math Son of Mathonwy’; Étaín goes from Echu to Ailill and back to Echu. In the final section, it is Mider and Echu who contest Étaín, and the tasks assigned Mider recall those imposed upon the Dagdae in the first section and thoseimposed upon Culhwch; Étaín goes from Echu to Mider, back to Echu (in the person of her daughter), back to Mider and, in some traditions, back to Echu – the uncertain conclusion underlines the seasonal motif.
    ‘The Wooing of Étaín’ is also a kind of legal primer. The first section, wherein Óengus gains possession of Bruig na Bóinde (at Samuin, naturally), demonstrates that the Irish had a poetic sense of law. Frank O‘Connor says that ‘The trick – borrowing the use of New Grange for a day and a night and then claiming successfully that this means for all time – has some esoteric meaning which I cannot grasp’; 1 but there is nothing esoteric here. Óengus’s argument that ‘it is in days and nights that the world passes’ explains everything. Mider uses the same trick in the third section, for, in claiming that Echu has ‘sold’ Étaíen, he is clearly arguing that ‘My arms round Étaín and a kiss from her’ entitle him to permanent possession of her, that it is in embraces and kisses that love is spent. (Actually, since the last fidchell game is played for an open stake, Mider could simply have asked for Étaín outright; but perhaps then Echu would not have kept the bargain.) Since Echu does not accept this argument – he claims that he has not sold Étaín – Mider is forced to trick him a second time; thinking that he has picked out Étaín from among the fifty women, Echu pledges himself content, but actually he has chosen his own (and Étaín’s) daughter. Mider’s name, appropriately, seems to derive from a Celtic root meaning ‘to judge’.

The Wooing of Étain

    There was over Ériu a famous king from the Túatha Dé Danand, and Echu Ollathir was his name. Another name for him was the Dagdae, for it was he who performed miracles and saw to the weather and the harvest, and that is why he was called the Good God. Elcmar of Bruig na Bóinde had a wife whose name was Eithne, though she was also called Bóand. 2 The Dagdae wanted to sleep with Bóand, and she would have allowed him, but she feared Elcmar and the extent of his power. The Dagdae sent Elcmar away, then, on a journey to Bress son of Elatha at Mag nInis; and as Elcmar was leaving, the Dagdae cast great spells upon him, so that he would not return quickly, so that he would not perceive the darkness of night, so that he would feel neither hunger nor thirst. The Dagdae charged Elcmar with great commissions, so that nine months passed like a single day, for Elcmar had said that he would return before nightfall. The Dagdae slept with Elcmar’s wife, then, and she bore him a son, who was named Óengus; and by the time of Elcmar’s return, she had so recovered that he had no inkling of her having slept with the Dagdae.
    The Dagdae took his son to be fostered in the house of Mider at Brí Léith in Tethbae, and Óengus was reared there for nine years. Mider had a playing field at Brí Léith, and three fifties of the young boys of Ériu were there together with three fifties of the young girls. And Óengus was their leader, because of Mider’s love for him and because of hishandsomeness and the nobility of his people. He was also called the Mace Óc, for his mother had said ‘Young the son who is conceived at dawn and born before dusk.’ 3
    Now Óengus fell out with Tríath son of Febal (or Gobor) of the Fir Bolg – Tríath was also a fosterling of Mider and was the other leader at play. Óengus had no mind to speak with Tríath, and he said ‘It angers me that the son of a slave should talk to me’, for he believed that Mider was his father and that he was heir to the kingship of