into exile; and here it may be mentioned in passing that Fergus had, some time before departing from Ulster, acted as foster-father and tutor to the son of a sister of Conchobar's: this was Cúchulainn, who, as the greatest of the solar heroes of the Ultonian cycle, will have to be referred to repeatedly as we go on. Fergus and his adherents, while in exile, were hospitably received by Ailill and Medb.
This completes the part of the story which is here in point, and it requires one or two remarks. In the first place, Ailill has various descents ascribed him, or else Medb must have married two Ailills in succession, which is the view sometimes adopted; but that is of no great consequence. The name Ailill seems to be the Irish equivalent of the Welsh ellyll, 'an elf or demon,' and Medb's Ailill belongs to a race which is always found ranged against the Tuatha Dé Danann.[1] Medb herself, married first to Conchobar and then to Ailill, is to be classed with what I may, in default of a better term, designate goddesses of the dawn and dusk, who are found at one time consorting with bright beings and at another with dark ones. They also commonly associate themselves with water; thus Medb, after the death of her husband Ailill at the hands of an Ulster hero called Conall Cernach, one of the solar heroes of the Ultonian cycle of stories, dwelt in an island in Loch Ree, on the east side of which
- ↑ It is right, however, to say that an Ailill Find, 'Ailill the White or Fair,' belongs to the opposite race, as his wife Flidais is carried away by Fergus, at the end of a series of tragic events forming the subject of a well-known story introductory to the epic tale of the Táin, of which more anon. See the Bk. of Leinster, 247a—248a; also O'Curry's Manners, &c., iii. 338-9.
