Early Irish Myths and Sagas Read online

  Thereafter, the steward returned to Echu and described the great undertaking he had seen, and he said that in the entire world there was not the like of such power. As they were speaking, they saw Mider coming towards them, severely dressed and with an angry expression on his face. Echu was afraid, but he greeted Mider, and the latter replied ‘It is for that I have come. It was harsh and senseless of you to impose such great difficulties and hardships upon me. I would have performed yet another task that would have pleased you, but I was angry with you.’ ‘I will not return anger for anger – rather, I will set your mind at ease,’ said Echu. ‘I will accept that,’ said Mider. ‘Will we play fidchell now?’ ‘What will the wager be?’ asked Echu. ‘Whatever stake the winner names,’ said Mider. That day it was Mider who won. ‘You have taken my stake,’ said Echu. ‘I could have done so earlier if I had wished,’ replied Mider. ‘What will you have from me?’ asked Echu. ‘My arms round Étaín and a kiss from her,’ said Mider. Echu fell silent at that; finally, he said ‘Return a month from today, and you will have that.’

  The previous year, Mider had come to woo Étaín, but he had not been successful. The name by which he had called her then was Bé Find,9 and this is how he had spoken to her:

  Bé Find, will you come with me

  to a wondrous land where there is music?

  Hair is like the blooming primrose there;

  smooth bodies are the colour of snow.

  There, there is neither mine nor yours;

  bright are teeth, dark are brows.

  A delight to the eye the number of our hosts,

  the colour of foxglove every cheek.

  The colour of the plain-pink every neck,

  a delight to the eye blackbirds’ eggs;

  though fair to the eye Mag Fáil,

  it is a desert next to Mag Már.

  Intoxicating the ale of Inis Fáil;

  more intoxicating by far that of Tír Már.

  Á wonderful land that I describe:

  youth does not precede age.

  Warm, sweet streams throughout the land,

  your choice of mead and wine.

  A distinguished people, without blemish,

  conceived without sin or crime.

  We see everyone everywhere,

  and no one sees us:

  the darkness of Adam’s sin

  prevents our being discerned.

  Woman, if you come to my bright people,

  you will have a crown of gold for your head;

  honey, wine, fresh milk to drink

  you will have with me there, Bé Find.

  Étaín had replied ‘If you obtain me from my husband, I will go with you, but if you do not, I will stay.’ After that, Mider went to Echu to play fidchell, and at first he lost in order that he might have reason to quarrel. That is why he fulfilled Echu’s great demands, and that is why he afterwards proposed an undetermined stake.

  Mider thus agreed to return after a month. Echu arranged for the best warriors and warbands in Ériu to assemble at Temuir, each band encircling the next, with Temuir in the middle and the king and queen in the centre of their house and the doors locked, for they knew it was a man of great power who would come. That night, Étaín was serving the chieftains, for serving drink was a special talent of hers. As they were talking, they saw Mider coming towards them in the centre of the house; he had always been beautiful, but that night he was more beautiful still. The hosts who saw him were astonished, and they fell silent, but Echu bade him welcome. ‘It is that I have come for,’ Mider said, ‘that and what was promised me, for it is due. What was promised you was given.’ ‘I have not thought about it,’ said Echu. ‘Étaín herself promised me she would leave you,’ said Mider, and at that, Étaín blushed. ‘Do not blush, Étain,’ said Mider, ‘for you have done no wrong. I have spent a year wooing you with the most beautiful gifts and treasures in Ériu, and I have not taken you without Echu’s permission. If I have won you, I have done no evil.’ ‘I have said,’ Étaín replied, ‘that I will not go with you unless Echu sells me. For my part, you may take me if Echu sells me.’ ‘Indeed, I will not sell you,’ said Echu, ‘but he may put his arms round you here in the centre of the house.’ ‘That I will do.’ said Mider. He shifted his weapons to his left hand and put his right hand round Étaín, and he bore her up through the skylight of the house. Ashamed, the hosts rose up round the king, and they saw two swans flying round Temuir and making for Síd ar Femuin.

  Echu assembled the best men of Ériu, then, and went to Síd ar Femuin, that is, Síd Ban Find; and the men of Ériu advised him to unearth every síd in the land until the woman were found. They dug into Síd Ban Find until someone came out and told them that the woman was not there. ‘The king of the Side of Ériu is the man who came to you. He is in his royal fort with the woman; go there.’ Echu and his people went north and began to dig up Mider’s síd; they were at it for a year and three months, and whatever they dug up one day would be filled back in the next. Two white ravens came forth from the síd, followed by two hounds, Scleth and Samair. After that, the men returned south to Síd Ban Find and again began to dig it up. Someone came out and said ‘What do you have against us, Echu? We did not take your wife. No wrong has been done you. You dare not say anything harmful to a king.’ ‘I will not leave you,’ said Echu, ‘until you tell me how I may retrieve my wife.’ ‘Take with you blind dogs and cats, and leave them. That is what you must do each day.’

  They returned north and did that. As they were tearing down Síd Breg Léith, they saw Mider coming towards them, and he said ‘What do you have against me? You have not played fair with me, and you have imposed great hardships upon me. You sold your wife to me – do not injure me, then.’ ‘She will not remain with you,’ said Echu. ‘She will not, then,’ replied Mider. ‘Go home – by the truth of the one and the other, your wife will return to you by the third hour tomorrow. If that satisfies you, injure me no further.’ ‘I accept that,’ said Echu. Mider secured his promise and departed.

  At the third hour of the following day, they saw fifty women, all of the same appearance as Étaín and all dressed alike. At that, the hosts fell silent. A grey hag came before them and said to Echu ‘It is time for us to return home. Choose your wife now, or tell one of these women to remain with you.’ ‘How will you resolve your doubt?’ Echu asked his men. ‘We have no idea how,’ they answered. ‘But I have,’ said Echu. ‘My wife is the best at serving in Ériu, and that is how I will know her.’ Twenty-five of the women were sent to one side of the house, then, and twenty-five to the other side, and a vessel full of liquid was placed between them. The women came from one side and from the other, and still Echu could not find Étaín. It came down to the last two women: the first began to pour, and Echu said ‘This is Étaín, but she is not herself.’ He and his men held a council, and they decided ‘This is Étaín though it is not her serving.’ The other women left, then. The men of Ériu were greatly pleased with what Echu had done, and with the mighty accomplishments of the oxen and the rescue of the woman from the people of the Síde.

  One fine day, Echu rose, and he was talking to his wife in the centre of the house when they saw Mider coming towards them. ‘Well, Echu,’ Mider said. ‘Well,’ said Echu. ‘It is not fair play I have had from you,’ said Mider, ‘considering the hardships you imposed upon me and the troops you brought against me and all that you demanded of me. There is nothing you have not exacted from me.’ ‘I did not sell you my wife,’ said Echu. ‘Will you clear your conscience against me?’ asked Mider. ‘Not unless you offer a pledge of your own,’ replied Echu. ‘Are you content, then?’ asked Mider. ‘I am,’ Echu replied. ‘So am I,’ said Mider. ‘Your wife was pregnant when I took her from you, and she bore a daughter, and it is that daughter who is with you now. Your wife is with me, and you have let her go a second time.’ With these words, Mider departed.

  Echu did not dare unearth Mider’s síd again, for he had pledged himself content. He was distr
essed that his wife had escaped and that he had slept with his own daughter; his daughter, moreover, became pregnant and bore a daughter. ‘O gods,’ he said, ‘never will I look upon the daughter of my daughter.’ Two members of his household took the girl, then, to throw her into a pit with wild beasts. They stopped at the house of Findlám, a herdsman of Temuir; this house was at Slíab Fúait, in the middle of a wilderness. There was no one in the house; the men ate there, and they threw the girl to the bitch and its pups that were in the house’s kennel, and they left. When the herdsman and his wife returned and saw the fair-haired child in the kennel, they were astonished. They took her from the kennel and reared her, though they knew not whence she had come, and she prospered, for she was the daughter of a king and a queen. She was the best of women at embroidery: her eyes saw nothing that her hands could not embroider. She was reared by Findlám and his wife until, one day, Eterscélae’s people saw her and told their king. Eterscélae took her away by force and made her his wife, and thus she became the mother of Conare son of Eterscélae.

  The Destruction of Da Derga’s Hostel

  Introduction

  ‘The Destruction of Da Derga’s Hostel’ is part impacted myth, part heroic saga and part literary tour de force. The name of the hosteller in the title is uncertain: some texts give Úa Dergae (the nephew of the red goddess) instead of Da Derga (the red god). In either case, the red deity is chthonic; and the mythic subtext deals with the slaying of a king, in a house of death, at Samuin. Although there is no mention of an iron house, the raiders’ attempts to burn the hostel suggests that it is related to the iron houses in ‘The Intoxication of the Ulaid’ and ‘The Destruction of Dind Rig’. Curiously, although Conare is slain – and that is the point of the tale – the hostel is never actually destroyed.

  The opening episode, which describes the wooing of Étaín by Echu Feidlech, expands upon the story in the second section of ‘The Wooing of Étaín’. At the point where Echu dies, however, something appears to be missing, even though there is no evidence of a lacuna. What follows in the manuscripts is very confused, even as to syntax, but it appears to be a garbled version of the incest episode at the end of ‘The Wooing of Étaín’, and we can probably assume that, originally, the child is abandoned because it is the offspring of the king’s inadvertent union with his own daughter. The conception of Conare Már, like that of the Ulaid hero Cú Chulaind, is duple, the storyteller in both cases attempting to reconcile traditions of divine paternity with those of ordinary mortal fatherhood. Once Conare has been installed as king, the tale begins to edge into a kind of history – perhaps it recalls a significant battle or raid in Irish tribal warfare.

  Throughout ‘The Destruction of Da Derga’s Hostel’, Conare appears doomed: doomed to break his gessa (taboos), doomed to die for being the offspring of incest. Yet he is not entirely guiltless: the story suggests that he has shown poor judgement in excusing his foster-brothers from hanging and in interfering in the quarrel between his two clients. The structure of the tale is idiosyncratic; some may find the catalogue section tedious and the climax disappointingly perfunctory. Irish stories, in manuscript, do tend to become ‘unbalanced’: descriptive passages flower into luxuriant growths out of all proportion to their narrative importance (perhaps owing to the storyteller’s showing off), while conclusions seem casually, even indifferently, thrown away (perhaps owing to the storyteller’s or scribe’s growing tired). But it is also true that descriptive catalogues of this sort were important to the Celts – both as literary set-pieces and as a matter of record – and that, in this case at least, the lack of attention given to the dénouement underlines its inevitability.

  The Destruction of Da Derga’s Hostel

  There was once a famous, noble king of Ériu, and Echu Feidlech was his name. One day, as he was crossing the fairground of Brí Léith, he saw a woman at the edge of the well. She had a bright silver comb with gold ornamentation on it, and she was washing from a silver vessel with four gold birds on it and bright, tiny gems of crimson carbuncle on its rims. There was a crimson cloak of beautiful, curly fleece round her, fastened with a silver brooch coiled with lovely gold; her long-hooded tunic was of stiff, smooth, green silk embroidered with red gold, and there were wondrous animal brooches of gold and silver at her breast and on her shoulders. When the sun shone upon her, the gold would glisten very red against the green silk. Two tresses of yellow gold she had, and each tress was a weaving of four twists with a globe at the end. Men would say that hair was like the blooming iris in summer or like red gold after it had been burnished.

  At the well, the woman loosened her hair in order to wash it, and her hands appeared through the opening of the neck of her dress. As white as the snow of a single night her wrists; as tender and even and red as foxglove her clear, lovely cheeks. As black as a beetle’s back her brows; a shower of matched pearls her teeth. Hyacinth blue her eyes; Parthian red her lips. Straight, smooth, soft and white her shoulders; pure white and tapering her fingers; long her arms. As white as sea foam her Síde, slender, long, smooth, yielding, soft as wool. Warm and smooth, sleek and white her thighs; round and small, firm and white her knees. Short and white and straight her shins; fine and straight and lovely her heels. If a rule were put against her feet, scarcely a fault would be found save for a plenitude of flesh or skin. The blushing light of the moon in her noble face; an uplifting of pride in her smooth brows; a gleam of courting each of her two royal eyes. Dimples of pleasure each of her cheeks, where spots red as the blood of a calf alternated with spots the whiteness of shining snow. A gentle, womanly dignity in her voice; a steady, stately step, the walk of a queen. She was the fairest and most perfect and most beautiful of all the women in the world; men thought she was of the Síde, and they said of her: ‘Lovely anyone until Étaín. Beautiful anyone until Étaín.’

  A strong desire at once seized the king, and he sent a messenger on ahead to detain her. The king asked news of her, and when he had identified himself, he said ‘Will there be a time for me to sleep with you?’ ‘It is that we have come for, under your protection,’ she answered. ‘Whence did you come and where do you go?’ Echu asked. ‘Not difficult that,’ she replied. ‘I am Étaín, daughter of Étar king of Echrade from the Síde. I have been here twenty years since I was born in the síd; men of the Síde, both kings and nobles, have sought me, but none obtained me, and that is because I have loved you with the love of a child since I was able to speak, both for your splendour and for the noble tales about you. I have never seen you, but I knew you by your description. It is you I wish to have.’ ‘Indeed, it is not a false friend whom you have sought from afar,’ said Echu. ‘You will be welcome, and you will have every one of your women, and I will be yours alone for as long as you desire.’ ‘My proper bridal gift first,’ said Étaín, ‘and then my desire.’ ‘You will have that,’ said Echu, and her bridal price was given to her, seven cumals.

  Then the king, Echu Feidlech, died.

  *

  After a time Cormac, who was king of Ulaid and a man of three gifts, abandoned Echu’s daughter because she was barren save for the daughter she had borne after her mother had made a porridge for her. She had said to her mother ‘A wrong you have done me, for it is a daughter I will bear.’ ‘No matter that,’ her mother had replied, ‘for a king will seek the girl.’

  Cormac then took back the woman – Étaín – and it was his wish to kill the daughter of the woman he had abandoned. He did not allow her mother to rear her but ordered two servants to take her to a pit. As they were throwing her into the pit, she laughed and smiled at them, and a weakness overcame them. They took her, then, to the cattle shed of the herdsman of Eterscélae son of lar king of Temuir; there they fostered her until she became a good embroiderer, and there was not in Ériu a king’s daughter fairer than she. They wove her a house that had no door, only a window and a skylight. Eterscélae’s people noticed this house, and it seemed to them that the herdsmen were taking food inside. One man looke
d through the skylight, then, and he saw a very fair, very beautiful woman inside. This news was related to the king, and people were sent immediately to destroy the house and take the woman without permission, for the king was barren, and it had been prophesied that a woman of unknown race would bear him a son.

  That night, when the woman was in the house, she saw a bird coming to her through the skylight; it left its feather hood in the middle of the house and took her and said ‘The king’s people are coming to destroy this house and take you to him by force. But you will be with child by me and will bear a son, and his name will be Conare’ (her name was Mess Búachalla), ‘and he is not to kill birds.’

  After that, she was taken to the king. Her fosterers went with her, and she was betrothed to the king; he gave seven cumals to her and seven to her fosterers. The fosterers were ennobled so that they became of the ruling class; thus, there are two men called Fedilmid Rechtade. The woman bore the king a son – Conare son of Mess Búachalla – and she requested of the king that the boy have three fosterages: the men who had fostered her and the two men called Mane Milscothach and she herself. And she said to the men of Ériu ‘Those of you who wish anything from the boy should contribute to the three households.’

  Thus Conare was reared. The men of Ériu knew him from the day he was born, and three other boys were reared with him: Fer Lé and Fer Gar and Fer Rogain, all sons of the fían-champion Dond Désa, a man of supporters for the support of the boy.1 Conare possessed three gifts – the gift of hearing and the gift of seeing and the gift of judgement – and he taught a gift to each of his foster-brothers. Whenever a meal was prepared for him, the four would go to it together; and even if three meals were prepared for him, every one of them would go to his meal. And all four had the same garments and weapons and colour of horses.