Then Midir took his weapons in his left hand and placed his right around Etain, and when he did so they rose up in the air over the heads of the host, and passed through a roof-window in the palace. Then all rose up, tumultuous and angry, and rushed out of doors, but nothing could they see save two white swans that circled high in air around the Hill of Tara, and then flew southwards and away towards the fairy mountain of Slievenamon. And thus Etain the immortal rejoined the Immortals; but a daughter of Etain and of Eochy, who was another Etain in name and in beauty, became in due time a wife, and mother of kings.
CHAPTER VIII
How Ethne Quitted Fairyland
By the banks of the River Boyne, where rises the great Fairy Mound now called Newgrange, there stood long ago the shining Palace of a prince of the People of Dana, named Angus. Of him it is that the lines are written—
"By the dark rolling waters of the Boyne
Where Angus Óg magnificently dwells."
When the Milesian race invaded Ireland, and after long fighting subdued the Danaans in spite of all their enchantments and all their valour, the Danaans wrought for themselves certain charms by which they and all their possessions became invisible to mortals, and thus they continued to lead their old joyous life in the holy places of the land, and their palaces and dancing-places and folk-motes seem to the human eye to be merely a green mound or rath, or a lonely hillside, or a ruined shrine with nettles and foxgloves growing up among its broken masonry.
Now, after Angus and his folk had thus retreated behind the veil of invisibility, it happened that the steward of his palace had a daughter born to him whose name was Ethne. On the same day Fand, the wife of Mananan the Sea God, bore him a daughter, and since Angus was a friend of Mananan and much beloved by him, the child of the Sea God was sent to Brugh na Boyna, the noble dwelling-place of Angus, to be fostered and brought up, as the custom was. And Ethne became the handmaid of the young princess of the sea.
In time Ethne grew into a fair and stately maiden Now in the Brugh of Angus there were two magical treasures, namely, an ale-vat which could never be emptied, and two swine whereof one was ever roasted and ready to be eaten while the other lived, and thus they were, day and day about. There was therefore always a store of food of faery, charged with magical spells, by eating of which one could never grow old or die. It came to be noticed that after Ethne had grown up she never ate or drank of the fairy food, or of any other, yet she continued to seem healthy and well-nourished. This was reported to Angus, and by him to Mananan, and Mananan by his wisdom discovered the cause of it. One of the lords of the Danaans, happening to be on a visit with Angus, was rendered distraught by the maiden's beauty, and one day he laid hands upon her and strove to carry her away to his own dwelling. Ethne escaped from him, but the blaze of resentment at the insult that lit up in her soul consumed in her the fairy nature, that knows not of good or evil, and the nature of the children of Adam took its place. Thenceforth she ate not of the fairy food, which is prohibited to man, and she was nourished miraculously by the will of the One God. But after a time it chanced that Mananan and Angus brought from the Holy Land two cows whose milk could never run dry. In this milk there was nothing of the fairy spell, and Ethne lived upon it many long years, milking the cows herself, nor did her youth and beauty suffer any change.