Celtic mythology is the mythology of Celtic polytheism, the religion of the Iron Age Celts. Like other Iron Age Europeans, the early Celts maintained a polytheistic mythology and religious structure. Among Celts in close contact with Ancient Rome, s...
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Part I
Long ago, there was a king in Ireland called Eochaid, who married the most beautiful woman that he had ever seen (as kings are wont to do). He did not know, and nor did she, that she was really a fairy woman called Etain, and before too long had passed, her fairy husband Midir came to claim her.
Etain left a daughter behind her, and the king could not bear to look upon the child, so he bade his attendants to put the child to death. They brought her to the well to drown her, but she smiled a laughing smile up at them and they could not bring themselves to destroy the child. So they gave her to the cowherds to raise, and the cowherds named her Meas Buachalla, which means the fosterling of the cowherds. They loved her dearly, but they feared what would happen to her if she were ever found. So they built a little house for her, with no windows or doors, so no one could get in, but with half the house unroofed and open to the sky, so she would not feel confined.
Meas Buachalla grew up, and she grew up beautiful as her mother before her, but nobody in Ireland knew, for nobody had seen her.
The High King of Ireland at this time was named …, and a druid had prophesised that he was to marry a woman of an unknown race. Now, the king was perplexed as to what this might mean, and who this might be, so he had his men keep an eye out in their travels for a woman fitting that description. One day, two of his men came across Meas Buachalla’s strange little house. At first they took it for a storage shed of some kind, but when they crept up, and peered through a chink in the walls, they saw the most beautiful woman either of them had ever laid eyes on inside. They ran back to the king to tell him what they’d seen, and he decided that this must be the woman the druid had spoken of. So he sent his men to fetch her away so that he could marry her.
That night, a huge bird flew down into Meas Buachalla’s house. It threw off its feathers and turned into a beautiful young man. The Bird Man lay down with Meas Buachalla and later, he told her that he was the Bird King and she was going to have his child. Then he explained to her that she was going to marry the High King of Ireland, and that her child would one day become a king. He told her to name this child Conaire, son of Meas Buachalla.
It all happened as the Bird King had said: Meas Buachalla married the king, and when Conaire was born, everyone thought it was the king’s own son. Now Meas Buachalla loved Conaire so much that she wanted him to have the best possible life, and be loved as much as a child can be loved. She decided that he should have three foster families, and in each of these families he had a foster brother.
Conaire and his three foster brothers were inseparable. Whenever a plate of food was put down in front of one of them, all four of them would eat off it, even if four places were set. They dressed in the same coloured clothes, they had the same colour of horses, and they were never found apart from one another.
