lainn. It is to the effect[1] that when Conchobar and his party, including his charioteer Dechtere, were overtaken in the fairy neighbourhood of the Brugh of the Boyne, they came across a solitary new house there, the owner of which bade them enter. They hesitated, both on account of the smallness of the building and of its probable lack of provisions and sleeping accommodation: in, however, they went, and they had not been there long when they suddenly[2] espied a kitchen door. In due time they had food and drink of the most varied and luxurious description brought them, and they had never, they thought, found themselves better served. But when they had become merry and rather more, their host informed them that his wife in the kitchen was overtaken by the pains of childbirth. Dechtere went to her, and a boy was born, at the same time that a mare at the door gave birth to two colts. In the morning the Ultonian party found themselves alone in the open air with their horses, the baby and the two colts. The colts were kept as a present for the baby, and the latter was reared by Dechtere for some time; but one day the child fell ill and died, to her profound grief; but for the next avatar of Lug, Dechtere found herself chosen to be the mother, as she was informed by him in a dream, when he took the opportunity also of charging her to keep the colts for the boy that was to be born and to be called Setanta. The coincidence is not seriously lessened by the colts being two in the one story and only one in
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V. THE SUN HERO.
