328 Reviews.
The story, which is preserved in eight or more manuscripts ranging from the twelfth to the fifteenth century or later, belongs to that stage of development when the mythical and the historical meet, and we cannot tell where imagination ends and fact begins. It preserves for us, however, certain indications of the ancient Irish belief in tabus and in totemism which deserve attention.
In brief outline the story is as follows. The kingship of Tara was vacant, and guidance in the choice of the succeeding monarch was sought according to the ancient mystical rites. A bull was slain, and a man having partaken of the flesh and broth sank into slumber. Over him was chanted a " spell of truth," after which on his awakening he should announce publicly whom he had seen in his dreams. Whoever he had seen must be accepted as king ; but an error was punished by the death of the soothsayer. 1
On this occasion the dreamer announced that he saw in his sleep at the end of the night a man stark-naked, passing along the road to Tara, with a stone in his sling. The man who answered to this description was Conaire, whose origin is related in the earlier part of the story. Conaire was of semi-divine origin, the grandson of that Etain of the Sidh who had wedded the mortal monarch, Eochaid Feidlech. The beautiful description of this immortal goddess, earth-descended, is repeated in this tale from the separate story of the " Wooing of Etain," in which the contest between Eochaid and her invisible spouse, Midir of Bri Leith, for her possession, is recounted. Eochaid had died, leaving but one daughter, called after her mother, Etain, and wedded to Cormac, King of Ulster. She too has only one daughter ; and the king, disgusted at the want of a son, gives the babe to two slaves to cast into a pit. But the babe laughs up into their faces just as they are about to destroy her ; their hearts relent and the child is saved. They carry her into the sheds where the cows of Eterscel, King of Tara, are kept, and there she is brought up among the cowherds. Like Deirdre, she is enclosed in a house of wickerwork without window or door, but the king's folk espy her through the skylight and report her beauty to the king, who carries her off and marries her. He was childless, and it had been prophesied to him by his wizards that a woman of unknown race
' At /Egira in Achaia the priestess of Earth drank the fresh blood of a bull before she descended into the cave to prophesy. Frazer, Golden Bough, i., 134, quoting Pliny H. N., xxviii-147, editor's note.
