Page:The Mythology of All Races Vol 3 (Celtic and Slavic).djvu/326

208 at the same time as she. Ethne was found to be eating none of the divine pigs nor drinking Goibniu's beer, yet she remained in health; a grave insult had been offered to her by a god, and now she could not eat, but an angel sent from God kept her alive. Meanwhile Oengus and Manannan brought cows from India, and as their milk had none of the demoniac nature of the gods' immortal food, Ethne drank it and was nourished for fifteen hundred years until St. Patrick came to Ireland. One day she went bathing with Curcog and her companions, but she returned no more to the síd with them, for through the power of Christianity in the land she had laid aside with her garments the charm of invisibility, the Féth Fiada. She could now be seen by men and could no longer perceive her divine companions or the road to the invisible síd. Wandering in search of them, she found a monk seated by a church and to him she narrated her story, whereupon he took her to St. Patrick, who baptized her. One day, as she sat by the door of the church, she heard the cries of the invisible síd-folk searching for her and bewailing her; she fainted and now fell into a decline, dying with her head on the Saint's breast.6 In this tale the general Christian attitude to the gods obtrudes itself—although the conception of their immortality and invisibility is accepted, they are demons or attended by these; Ethne had a demon guardian who left her when the angel arrived and as a result of her chastity. Not unlike this story is that of Liban, daughter of Eochaid, whose family were drowned by the bursting of a well. Liban and her lapdog were preserved for a year in the water, but then she was changed into a salmon, save her head, and her dog into an otter. After three hundred years she was caught by her own wish and was baptized by St. Comgall, dying thereafter.7

In the Cúchulainn saga Conchobar was born at the hour of Christ's Nativity, and Cathbad sang beforehand a prophecy of the two births, telling also how Conchobar would "find his death in avenging the suffering God," though the hero did not