Etain

ETAIN

Midir was overcome with desire when he first set eyes on me. That’s how they tell it in the mythologies. Was I bathing naked in a forest pool or was it a mountain stream or the shallows of some rushy lake? The detail doesn't signify. Detail is in the vision of the teller and there are many tellers of tales. Thus, you may suppose that it was the curve of my neck that inflamed Midir’s passion or the slenderness of my arm or perhaps the snowy whiteness of my breasts that were either in bud or full and round, depending on your taste in such matters. What the mythologies are agreed upon is that Midir could simply have ravished me there and then, as fairy princes are apt to do when roused to passion. However, because Midir was proud, according to one version of the tale, or honourable, according to another or who knows, maybe because he sincerely desired to win my love, he desisted. The sources are in agreement on this point. Midir was no rapist. Although his magic powers could have overcome me and all belonging to me, he did the decent thing. He went to my father and asked for my hand in marriage.

My father was not at all pleased at his request. Even though Midir was son of the all-powerful Dagda, High King of Ireland and my father was one petty king among many petty kings of Ulster, he had no wish to have him for a son-in-law. Marriage alliances consist of give and take but neither Midir nor his father, the Dagda were likely ever to need anything my father had to give so he would never be able to ask for favours in return. He could gain a lot more by marrying me to some king or princeling as petty as himself, some lesser ruler of lands bordering our own. That would reinforce old alliances or forge new ones. But my father had nothing to gain from marrying me to Midir.

He tried to discourage my noble suitor. You know, the usual thing you hear of in old tales. He set him some assorted impossible tasks that he must accomplish before he would be worthy of me. Midir's first task was be to drain the bogs of Ulster, transforming them into fields of corn watered by broad rivers teeming with trout and salmon and flowing all the way to the sea. His second task was to level the impenetrable forests that covered much of my father’s territory and replace them with fertile plains filled with herds of grazing cattle. His third and final task was to build a stone castle sixty roods in height and three hundred in length and breadth. The castle was to be furnished with gold and velvet and previous ivories. Each task, naturally, was to be accomplished in a single night. How otherwise would such tasks be impossible?

It didn't occur to my father that Midir would go straight to the Dagda and ask him for the powerful magic he needed to win me. Which is, of course, what Midir did.

“What about Fuamnach?” the Dagda asked.

“What about her?”

The Dagda saw at once that his son was consumed by his passion for me. He was not a man to stand in the way of love. "Don't tell Fumnach I helped you," he said to his son as he granted his request.

So it was that on the morning of the fourth day, Midir came to my father to tell him that where his bogs once were there were now cornfields drained by twelve rivers filled with trout and salmon and flowing north and east and west into the sea. He told him that where his impenetrable forests had stood was now a lush grassy plains where extensive herds of cattle were already grazing and finally, that a splendid stone castle filled with silks and ebony and gold awaited his entrance.

My father can’t have been entirely displeased. There's a lot to be said for owning fertile acres and well drained bogs. On the day of my marriage he ordered my marriage portion, my own weight in gold, to be heaped up beside me on the floor of his splendid new castle hall. There I sat on a silken rug, waiting for Midir to come and claim me.

Oddly, the old mythologies that relate so variously how Midir caught his first glimpse of me have nothing at all to say about my first glimpse of Midir. What can I say? That his face was beautiful as the sunrise? That his shape was tall and noble? Ah yes. He was beautiful and tall and the light of godhood shone about him. Midir was nothing if not godlike. But what made me love him was not his handsome face nor the breadth of his shoulders. No. What I loved best about Midir was the way he spurned the heap of gold at my side. He had come for me, not my father’s gold. He took my hand and raised me up till we were face to face. Then he pressed his lips against mine and I knew I desired no man but Midir.

We lay that night in a bed of bracken and heather on the steep side of Wehalt. For nine days we wandered in the mountain, feasting on bilberries and small trout that I caught for Midir in the tumbling streams. There was much love talk between us yet with all his talk, Midir never thought to mention that he already had a wife. Not that it mattered. Even if he had told me about Fuamnach, it was too late now. I could never stop loving him.