"'Tis for that we have come hither under thy safeguard," quoth she.
"Query, whence art thou and whence hast thou come?" says Eochaid.
"Easy to say," quoth she. "Etáin am I, daughter of Etar, king of the cavalcade from the elfmounds. I have been here for twenty years since I was born in an elfmound. The men of the elfmound, both kings and nobles, have been wooing me; but nought was gotten from me, because ever since I was able to speak, I have loved thee and given thee a child's love for the high tales about thee and thy splendour. And though I had never seen thee, I knew thee at once from thy description: it is thou, then, I have reached."
"No 'seeking of an ill friend afar' shall be thine," says Eochaid. "Thou shalt have welcome, and for thee every other woman shall be left by me, and with thee alone will I live so long as thou hast honour."
"My proper bride-price to me!" she says, "and afterwards my desire."
"Thou shalt have both," says Eochaid.
Seven cumals[3] are given to her.
[3] I.e., twenty-one cows.
Then the king, even Eochaid Feidlech, dies, leaving one daughter named, like her mother, Etáin, and wedded to Cormac, king of Ulaid.
After the end of a time Cormac, king of Ulaid, "the man of the three gifts," forsakes Eochaid's daughter, because she was barren save for one daughter that she had borne to Cormac after the making of the pottage which her mother--the woman from the elfmounds--gave her. Then she said to her mother: "Bad is what thou hast given me: it will be a daughter that I shall bear."