the guise of birds devastated Emain, as they wished to bring Conchobar and his men to their habitation. Dechtere then gave the visitor a purple mantle, with which he returned to his friends; but he, being Bricriu the Ultonian genius of mischief and discord, only told them that he had found a fine house; nor did he fail to dwell on the superior appearance of its owner and especially the beauty of his consort. Conchobar, reasoning in the way natural to kings and princes, said: 'That fellow is one of my men; he is in my land; let his wife come to me to-night.' But no sooner had she been brought than she gave it to be understood that she had been overtaken by the throes of childbirth, whereupon she was allowed to depart. The king and his men in due time went to sleep, and when they woke in the morning, what was their surprise to find themselves alone under the clear sky of heaven! The fairy houses and their fairy inmates had all disappeared, and all they had left behind them was a fine baby-boy in the king's brogue. The baby is handed over, as in the other versions, to the care of the king's sister Finnchoem, who seems now to have been his charioteer; but when she expresses her affection for the baby, it is Bricriu, and not Conchobar, who is made to say that she had little to choose between her own son and her own sister's son. He then relates all that he had learnt the previous day about Dechtere's escapade, which should be compared with the story of Caer (p. 170). What had now become of Dechtere, however, we are not told; but her deserting her son in the manner described[1] is not the only parallel between
- ↑ It is right to say that the story of the Táin in the Bk. of the Dun makes his father and mother rear him during his first years at a place
