AN EARLY IRISH VERSION OF THE
JEALOUS STEPMOTHER AND
EXPOSED CHILD.
THE Togail Bruidne Daderga (Destruction of Brudin Daderga), an Irish hero-tale, belonging to the oldest stratum of heroic legend, contains the following incident. Cormac mac Airt, King of Ulster, wedded to the daughter of Eochaid Feidlech, High King of Ireland, puts her away "because she was unfruitful, save that she bore a daughter to Cormac". He then weds Etain, a dame from faery, who had been the lady-love of his father-in-law, Eochaid. "Her demand was that the daughter of the woman who had been abandoned before her should be killed. Cormac would not give her (the child) to her mother to be nursed. His two servants took her afterwards to a pit, and sbp laughed a love laugh at them when being put into the pit. Their courage left them. They placed her subsequently in the calf-shed of the cowherds of Etirscel, great-grandson of lar, King of Tara, and these nurtured her till she was a good embroideress; and there was not in Ireland a king's daughter more beautiful than she." She is afterwards possessed by one of the fairy folk, who comes in to her as a bird and then assumes human shape, and he tells her that the king, report to whom of her beauty has been made, will send for her, "she will be fruitful from him (the bird-man), and will bear a son, and that son shall not kill birds." This happens, and the son (Conaire Mor) afterwards becomes High King of Ireland, and is the hero of the tale.
The Destruction of Daderga's fort (the tale is so called because, when resting there for the night, Conaire is attacked by pirates, slain with most of his following, and the
