married women and maidens of Ulster sing around him every evening a rhyme, the burden of which was 'Ferloga, my sweetheart.'[1] The mythological meaning of this insult to the heroes of Ulster is not quite evident; but after a time Ferloga was sent home to the west with a present consisting of Conchobar's two steeds richly caparisoned in gold.[2]
Lastly, whatever elements of a historical nature have been absorbed by the Conchobar legend, his well-defined position as a king of Ulster becomes at once obscured when one begins to look a little more closely into the so-called early history of Ireland. Thus it speaks of another Conchobar, known as Conchobar Abrad-ruad, 'Conchobar of the Red Eyebrows,' who alone has been admitted to a place in the Annals of the Kingdom of Ireland, compiled by the Four Masters in the earlier part of the 17th century. In that work he is represented as reigning over Erinn six years before the Incarnation, and dying at the hands of a son of Lugaid,[3] a contemporary of Cúchulainn, son of Conchobar mac Nessa's sister, Dechtere: so that the time of this Conchobar, king of Erinn, coincides, roughly speaking, with that of the king of Ulster of the same name, and I have very little doubt that the two were originally one, a view corroborated by the fact that Conchobar is by no means a common name in the remoter portions of
- ↑ Bk. of Leinster, 114a; Windisch's Irische Texte, p. 106; and O'Curry's Manners, iij. 372.
- ↑ This looks as if Ferloga, though called Ailill's charioteer, should be a sun-god; and the name Fer-loga meaning the 'Man of Lug or lug,' a word to be discussed later, would seem to point in the same direction.
- ↑ Four Masters, A. M. 5192.
