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By Root 731 0

her hands appeared through the opening of the neck of her dress. As white as the snow of a single night her wrists; as tender and even and red as foxglove her clear, lovely cheeks. As black as a beetle’s back her brows; a shower of matched pearls her teeth. Hyacinth blue her eyes; Parthian red her lips. Straight, smooth, soft and white her shoulders; pure white and tapering her fingers; long her arms. As white as sea foam her Síde, slender, long, smooth, yielding, soft as wool. Warm and smooth, sleek and white her thighs; round and small, firm and white her knees. Short and white and straight her shins; fine and straight and lovely her heels. If a rule were put against her feet, scarcely a fault would be found save for a plenitude of flesh or skin. The blushing light of the moon in her noble face; an uplifting of pride in her smooth brows; a gleam of courting each of her two royal eyes. Dimples of pleasure each of her cheeks, where spots red as the blood of a calf alternated with spots the whiteness of shining snow. A gentle, womanly dignity in her voice; a steady, stately step, the walk of a queen. She was the fairest and most perfect and most beautiful of all the women in the world; men thought she was of the Síde, and they said of her: ‘Lovely anyone until Étaín. Beautiful anyone until Étaín.’

A strong desire at once seized the king, and he sent a messenger on ahead to detain her. The king asked news of her, and when he had identified himself, he said ‘Will there be a time for me to sleep with you?’ ‘It is that we have come for, under your protection,’ she answered. ‘Whence did you come and where do you go?’ Echu asked. ‘Not difficult that,’ she replied. ‘I am Étaín, daughter of Étar king of Echrade from the Síde. I have been here twenty years since I was born in the síd; men of the Síde, both kings and nobles, have sought me, but none obtained me, and that is because I have loved you with the love of a child since I was able to speak, both for your splendour and for the noble tales about you. I have never seen you, but I knew you by your description. It is you I wish to have.’ ‘Indeed, it is not a false friend whom you have sought from afar,’ said Echu. ‘You will be welcome, and you will have every one of your women, and I will be yours alone for as long as you desire.’ ‘My proper bridal gift first,’ said Étaín, ‘and then my desire.’ ‘You will have that,’ said Echu, and her bridal price was given to her, seven cumals.

Then the king, Echu Feidlech, died.

*

After a time Cormac, who was king of Ulaid and a man of three gifts, abandoned Echu’s daughter because she was barren save for the daughter she had borne after her mother had made a porridge for her. She had said to her mother ‘A wrong you have done me, for it is a daughter I will bear.’ ‘No matter that,’ her mother had replied, ‘for a king will seek the girl.’

Cormac then took back the woman – Étaín – and it was his wish to kill the daughter of the woman he had abandoned. He did not allow her mother to rear her but ordered two servants to take her to a pit. As they were throwing her into the pit, she laughed and smiled at them, and a weakness overcame them. They took her, then, to the cattle shed of the herdsman of Eterscélae son of lar king of Temuir; there they fostered her until she became a good embroiderer, and there was not in Ériu a king’s daughter fairer than she. They wove her a house that had no door, only a window and a skylight. Eterscélae’s people noticed this house, and it seemed to them that the herdsmen were taking food inside. One man looked through the skylight, then, and he saw a very fair, very beautiful woman inside. This news was related to the king, and people were sent immediately to destroy the house and take the woman without permission, for the king was barren, and it had been prophesied that a woman of unknown race would bear him a son.

That night, when the woman was in the house, she saw a bird coming to her through the skylight; it left its feather hood in the middle of the house and took her and said ‘The king’s people are coming