THE COURTSHIP OF ETAIN

INTRODUCTION

The date which tradition assigns to the events related in the tale of the “Courtship of Etain” is about B.C. 100, two or, according to some accounts, three generations before the king Conaire Mor, or Conary, whose death is told in the tale called the “Destruction of Da Derga’s Hostel.”  This king is generally spoken of as a contemporary of the chief personages of what is called more especially the “Heroic Age” of Ireland; and the two versions of the “Courtship of Etain” given in this volume at once introduce a difficulty; for the sub-kings who were tributary to Eochaid, Etain’s husband, are in both versions stated to be Conor, Ailill mac Mata, Mesgegra, and Curoi, all of whom are well-known figures in the tales of the Heroic Age.  As Conary is related to have ruled sixty years, and several of the characters of the Heroic Age survived him, according to the tale that describes his death, the appearance of the names of Conor and Ailill in a tale about his grandfather (or according to the Egerton version his great-grandfather) introduces an obvious discrepancy.

It appears to be quite impossible to reconcile the dates given to the actors in the tales of the Heroic and preceding age.  They seem to have been given in the “antiquarian age” of the tenth and eleventh centuries; not only do they differ according to different chronologers by upwards of a hundred years, but the succession of kings in the accounts given by the same chronologer is often impossible in view of their mutual relationships.  The real state of things appears to be that the “Courtship of Etain,” together with the story of Conary, the lost tale of the destruction of the Fairy Hill of Nennta,[FN#5] and the tale of the Bull-Feast and election of Lugaid Red-Stripes as king of Ireland, forms a short cycle of romance based upon ancient legends that had originally no connection at all with those on which the romances of the Heroic Age were built.  The whole government of the country is essentially different in the two cycles; in the Etain cycle the idea is that of a land practically governed by one king, the vassal kings being of quite small importance; in the tales of the Heroic Age proper, the picture we get is of two, if not of four, practically independent kingdoms, the allusions to any over-king being very few, and in great part late.  But when the stories of Etain and of Conary assumed their present forms, when the writers of our romances formed them out of the traditions which descended to them from pro-Christian sources, both cycles of tradition were pretty well known; and there was a natural tendency to introduce personages from one cycle into the other, although these personages occupy a subordinate position in the cycle to which they do not properly belong.  Even Conall Cernach, who is a fairly prominent figure