were white cattle with red ears, belonged, not to Mider, but to another king of the other world, who was called Echaid Echbél, or E. Horse-mouth. He lived in Alban, and his cows used to come to graze in Dalriada, on a headland, now called Island Magee, in Antrim,[1] where they were appropriated by Cúchulainn and his men, from whom they were then stolen by Cúroi and carried away whither Cúchulainn knew not. This, it will be seen, is a Goidelic version of the story of Cacus stealing from Hercules some of the heifers he had taken from Geryon. The other thing confused with the story of Echaid's Cows was that of the contest for the daughter of Mider king of the fairies. This latter story taken by itself is transparent enough: it is devoted to the different stages in the usual conflict between the representative of light and darkness for the dawn-goddess: in the first engagement the former is vanquished and cropped of his long yellow hair, whereupon his retirement takes place for a time, just as he withdraws distraught from the haunts of men, when Fand is taken away from him by Manannán, the other great magician of Irish story. At the next stage the Sun-god succeeds in disposing of Cúroi and carrying away his wife to his own home; but the powers of darkness gain possession of her once more, for that is probably the meaning of her being borne away over the cliff.
According to these stories, Lugaid was the son of the
- ↑ The Stokes-O'Donovan Cormac, p. 72; also the Four Masters, A.M. 2859, O'Donovan's notes i, t. In the Bk. of Leinster these cows are called in the genitive, 'na tri nerc (.i. bó) iuchna,' and 'nanerc niuchna,' and the same word Iuchna, said there to be a proper name, occurs also in Cormac's article; but I have seen no explanation of the term.
