The Wooing of Étaín

Key takeaways: Tochmarc Étaíne is the principal tale of the Mythological Cycle, dated by language to around the ninth century; its heroine is transformed, blown across Ireland for two seven-year spans, and reborn one thousand and twelve years after her first begetting; Midir reclaims her from the High King through a fidchell wager and the pair leave Tara as two swans joined by a golden chain; and the ending is deliberately dark, seeding the story of Conaire Mór.

The survival of the text

The greatest love story of the Mythological Cycle very nearly did not survive at all.

Tochmarc Étaíne comprises three interlocking tales. The opening and end of Part I and much of Part III were lost from Lebor na hUidre through missing leaves; the complete text was not recovered until 1935, when stray leaves of the Yellow Book of Lecan were identified in the Phillipps collection at Cheltenham, now in the National Library of Ireland. Several rhetorical passages in Part I remain untranslated by Bergin and Best, the standard editors. Two variant accounts of Fuamnach’s death and two of Eochaid’s death stand in the text side by side without resolution.

The bride-price of Étaín

In the age of the Tuatha Dé Danann, the Dagda, Eochaid Ollathair, the All-Father, desired Boand, wife of Elcmar of the Brug on the Boyne. He sent Elcmar on an errand under enchantments so strong that nine months passed for him as a single day. The Dagda lay with Boand and she bore a son, Óengus, who was fostered in secret at Brí Léith by Midir of the Tuatha Dé. Called in Mac Óc, the Young Son, begotten at dawn and born between it and evening, Óengus grew up leader of the noble boys and maidens of Midir’s playing-field without knowing his true parentage. When a taunt from the Fir Bolg boy Triath exposed his uncertain birth, Midir revealed the truth and brought him to Uisnech to be acknowledged by the Dagda. By a legal stratagem on Samain, threatening Elcmar at Cnoc Síde in Borga but sparing him in exchange for kingship for “a day and a night,” which the Dagda adjudicated as encompassing all time, Óengus secured the Brug for himself. Elcmar was compensated with Cleitech.

A year later Midir visited and a quarrel among the youths struck out one of his eyes. Óengus fetched Dian Cécht, the divine physician, who healed the eye without blemish. Midir’s price for staying the year was a chariot, a mantle, and the fairest woman in Ireland. Óengus had the first two. For the third, Midir named her: Étaín Echraide, daughter of Ailill of the Ulaid, “the dearest and gentlest and loveliest in Ireland.”

Óengus went to Ailill’s house in Mag nInis. Ailill refused, then set escalating conditions. The Dagda cleared twelve great plains in a night, Mag Macha, Mag Murthemne, and others. Ailill demanded twelve rivers drawn from bogs to the sea; the Dagda accomplished this too. Still unsatisfied, Ailill required Étaín’s own weight in gold and silver, for the labour already done profited her kindred rather than him. The weight was paid. Étaín departed to the Brug, spent a night with Midir, and travelled with him to Brí Léith.

The pool and the purple fly

Óengus had warned Midir: Fuamnach, his first wife, was waiting there, reared by the wizard Bresal in all the craft of the Tuatha Dé, skilled, jealous, and unforgiving. She made a show of welcome, then led the couple to the sleeping chamber. “The seat of a good woman hast thou come into,” she said to Étaín. When Étaín sat in the chair at the centre of the house, Fuamnach struck her with a rod of scarlet quickentree and she became a pool of water on the floor. Fuamnach left for Bresal’s house; Midir left the pool.

The heat of fire and earth worked on the water: it became a worm, and the worm became a purple fly, as large as a man’s head, the most beautiful creature in the land. The hum of her wings, it was said, was sweeter than pipes and harps; her eyes shone like jewels in darkness; the drops from her wings healed sickness and plague. Midir knew she was Étaín and took no other wife while she attended him.

When Fuamnach returned under the guarantee of Lug, the Dagda, and Ogma, she was unrepentant: she would harm Étaín in whatever shape she wore. Calling on the magic of Bresal Étarlam she raised a wind of assault, and for seven years Étaín was blown across Ireland unable to land, living only on sea-rocks and ocean waves. At last she fell exhausted on the breast of Óengus at the mound of the Brug. He welcomed her: “Welcome, Étaín, wanderer careworn, thou that hast encountered great dangers through the cunning of Fuamnach.” (The rhetoric following this speech is untranslated in the Bergin and Best edition.) Óengus made her a crystal sun-bower filled with fragrant herbs, with bright windows for passing in and out; he carried it wherever he went and slept by her side each night until her gladness returned.

The golden beaker

Fuamnach tricked Midir into summoning Óengus away, then raised the wind again at the Brug. For a further seven years Étaín was driven across Ireland until the blast carried her to a house in Ulster where a company was drinking. She fell into the golden beaker before the wife of Étar, champion from Inber Cíchmaine. The woman swallowed her. Étaín was conceived and born again as Étaín daughter of Étar. The text states plainly: “it was a thousand and twelve years from the first begetting of Étaín by Ailill until her last begetting by Étar.”

Of her first life she would remember nothing.

Óengus returned to find the sun-bower empty, tracked Fuamnach to Aenech Bodbgna, and cut off her head. A variant in the same manuscript attributes both Fuamnach’s death and Midir’s to Manannán mac Lir, who burned them at Brí Léith; both accounts stand without resolution.

The love-sickness of Ailill

Eochaid Airem became High King. The provincial kings refused to hold the Festival of Tara for a king without a queen. Envoys found Étaín daughter of Étar and Eochaid married her. At the Festival, his brother Ailill Ánguba fell into love-sickness, growing weaker week by week, unable to confess for shame. When Eochaid left on circuit, he left Étaín to tend the dying man. The physician Fachtna diagnosed: “One of the two pains that kill man and no physician can heal, the pain of love and the pain of jealousy.” Ailill finally confessed to Étaín. She neither rebuked him nor consented outright, but arranged a tryst on the hill above the court, to preserve Eochaid’s honour in his own house.

Three times she kept the appointment; three times she met not Ailill but a man in Ailill’s exact likeness who spoke Ailill’s desired words, while Ailill himself fell into enchanted sleep at the appointed hour. On the third occasion Étaín challenged the stranger. He revealed himself as Midir of Brí Léith, her first husband, who had put the love-sickness on Ailill to manufacture this meeting. He recalled the brideprice paid in plains and rivers and gold. Étaín did not remember. She told him she would go with him only if Eochaid consented. When Eochaid returned, his brother was healed; Étaín received his thanks. Neither honour had been compromised.

The fidchell wager

Part III is most severely damaged in Lebor na hUidre; the complete text comes from the Phillipps copy of the Yellow Book of Lecan.

On a summer morning Eochaid climbed the terrace of Tara and found a strange warrior already there, though the courts had not been opened. Purple tunic, golden-yellow hair, shining blue eye, five-pointed spear, white-bossed shield set with gold. He was Midir of Brí Léith, and he proposed a game of fidchell. Eochaid noted that the board was in the queen’s house; Midir produced his own: a silver board with golden pieces, each corner lit by a precious stone, the men kept in a bag of plaited bronze links.

Eochaid won the first game: fifty dark-grey steeds with blood-red heads. He won a second: more livestock of supernatural description. His foster-father warned him: a man of great magic power had come; lay crushing burdens on him. Eochaid imposed four tasks: to clear the stones from Meath’s hills, to spread rushes over Tethba, to build a causeway over Móin Lámraige, and to raise a wood over Bréifne. The steward watched the causeway’s construction from the bog’s edge and reported it as the greatest labour ever seen, whole forests laid into the foundation, then gravel and stone, a host beyond reckoning under Midir’s direction. The text notes that this is when Eochaid first put the yoke on oxen’s necks rather than foreheads, earning his epithet: airem, ploughman.

Midir came back with anger on his face and demanded one final game, the stake to be named afterwards. This time Eochaid lost. “What wouldst thou from me?” The answer was precise: “My arms around Étaín and a kiss from her.” Eochaid postponed the claim for a month.

When the month was out, Eochaid surrounded Tara ring within ring with the finest warriors of Ireland, the courts locked, himself and Étaín in the innermost hall. Étaín was serving the lords, the pouring of drink was her especial gift. At the height of the evening Midir appeared in the middle of the house, passing no door, fairer than he had ever been. He claimed what was pledged. Eochaid granted the embrace but required it be done there before all. Midir took his weapons in his left hand and put his right arm around Étaín. He bore her upward through the skylight of the hall.

The company ran out in shame. Above Tara they saw two white swans, joined by a golden chain, circle once and fly south toward Síd ar Femuin, also called Síd Ban Find.

The thousand years were done. The wager was paid.

The digging of the síd

On the counsel of the men of Ireland, Eochaid set warriors to dig every síd in the land. What was dug by day was restored by night. After a year and three months Midir appeared from Síd Brí Léith and made a covenant: at the third hour the following morning, Étaín would be delivered. But morning brought fifty women to Tara, all of Étaín’s exact likeness and dress. Eochaid identified his wife by the one mark he trusted: she was the best server of drink in Ireland. He watched fifty women pour in pairs and chose, saying as he chose: “This is Étaín, and yet it is not herself.” The text preserves the uncertainty; he accepted the woman and took her home.

Later Midir returned. (This passage is preserved complete only in the Phillipps copy.) He told Eochaid that Étaín had been with child when taken; the woman Eochaid had chosen and lain with was his own daughter, born in the síd. The true Étaín was still with Midir; the covenant Eochaid had made bound him from digging again. Eochaid ordered the resulting infant exposed. She was left in a kennel at the house of the herdsman Findlám on Sliab Fuait, found, raised in secrecy, and in time became the wife of Étarscél and mother of the high king Conaire Mór, whose destruction is told in Togail Bruidne Dá Derga. The dark implication, that Midir’s deception has corrupted the royal bloodline through incest, is preserved without explicit authorial comment in the surviving text.

As for Eochaid: alone at Dún Frémainn in Tethba, Sigmall Cael, Midir’s grandson, came with Mórmael and the men of Tethba, who bore long grievance over tribute. They burned the stronghold and slew the king. His head was carried to Síd Nennta. A second account in the text names the killing as politically motivated by Eochaid’s oppressive taxation of Tethba, and notes that Sigmall had already been killed by Manannán and so could not have done it. Both versions stand in the manuscripts.