Early Irish Myths and Sagas - Jeffrey Gantz [18]
This task also having been accomplished, the Mace Óc again went to Ailill and demanded Étaín. ‘You will not have her until you buy her,’ said Ailill, ‘for after you take her away I will have no further good of her, only what you give me now.’ ‘What do you want, then?’ asked the Mace Óc. ‘I want her weight in gold and silver, for that is my share of her price. Everything that you have done so far has profited only her family and her people.’ ‘You will have that,’ said the Mace Óc. The woman was brought to the centre of Ailill’s house, and her weight in gold and silver was handed over. That wealth was left with Ailill, and the Mace Óc took Étaín home with him.
Mider welcomed the two of them. He slept with Étaín that night, and the following day his clothing and his chariot were given him, and he thanked his foster-son. He stayed a year in the Bruig with Óengus, and then he returned to Brí Léith and his own land, and he took Étaín with him. As he was leaving, the Mace Óc said ‘Look after the woman you are taking with you, for there awaits you a woman of dreadful sorcery, a woman with all the knowledge and skill and power of her people. She has, moreover, my guarantee of safety against the Túatha Dé Danand.’ This woman was Fúamnach wife of Mider, from the family of Béothach son of lardanél; she was wise and clever, and she was versed in the knowledge and power of the Túatha Dé Danand, for the druid Bresal had reared her before her engagement to Mider.
Fúamnach welcomed her husband, and she spoke much of friendship to them. ‘Come, Mider,’ she said, ‘that you may see your house and your lands, that the king’s daughter may see your wealth.’ Mider went round all his lands with Fúamnach, and she showed his holdings to him and to Étaín. He took Étaín back to Fúamnach, then. Fúamnach preceded Étaín into the house where she slept, and she said to her ‘The seat of a good woman have you occupied.’ With that, Étaín sat in the chair in the centre of the house, whereupon Fúamnach struck her with a wand of scarlet rowan and turned her into a pool of water. Fúamnach went to her foster-father Bresal, then, and Mider left the house to the water that had been made of Étaín. After that, Mider was without a woman.
The heat of the fire and the air and the seething of the ground combined to turn the pool of water that was in the centre of the house into a worm, and they then turned the worm into a scarlet fly. This fly was the size of the head of the handsomest man in the land, and the sound of its voice and the beating of its wings were sweeter than pipes and harps and horns. Its eyes shone like precious stones in the dark, and its colour and fragrance could sate hunger and quench thirst in any man; moreover, a sprinkling of the drops it shed from its wings could cure every sickness and affliction and disease. This fly accompanied Mider as he travelled through his land, and listening to it and gazing upon it nourished hosts in their meetings and assemblies. Mider knew that the fly was Étaín, and while it was with him he did not take another wife, for the sight of it nourished him. He would fall asleep to its buzzing, and it would awaken him when anyone approached who did not love him.
Eventually, Fúamnach came to visit Mider, and, to guarantee her safety, three of the Túatha Dé Danand came with her: Lug and the Dagdae and Ogmae. Mider upbraided Fúamnach and said that but for the guarantee of those who had come with her she would not have been permitted to leave; Fúamnach answered that she did not regret what she had done, that she preferred being good to