volume at once introduce a difficulty; for the sub-kings who were
tributary to Eochaid, Etain's husband, are in both versions stated to
be Conor, Ailill mac Mata, Mesgegra, and Curoi, all of whom are
well-known figures in the tales of the Heroic Age. As Conary is
related to have ruled sixty years, and several of the characters of the
Heroic Age survived him, according to the tale that describes his
death, the appearance of the names of Conor and Ailill in a tale about
his grandfather (or according to the Egerton version his
great-grandfather) introduces an obvious discrepancy.

It appears to be quite impossible to reconcile the dates given to the
actors in the tales of the Heroic and preceding age. They seem to have
been given in the "antiquarian age" of the tenth and eleventh
centuries; not only do they differ according to different chronologers
by upwards of a hundred years, but the succession of kings in the
accounts given by the same chronologer is often impossible in view of
their mutual relationships. The real state of things appears to be
that the "Courtship of Etain," together with the story of Conary, the
lost tale of the destruction of the Fairy Hill of Nennta,[FN#5] and the
tale of the Bull-Feast and election of Lugaid Red-Stripes as king of
Ireland, forms a short cycle of romance based upon ancient legends that
had originally no connection at all with those on which the romances of
the Heroic Age were built. The whole government of the country is
essentially different in the two cycles; in the Etain cycle the idea is
that of a land practically governed by one king, the vassal kings being
of quite small importance; in the tales of the Heroic Age proper, the
picture we get is of two, if not of four, practically independent
kingdoms, the allusions to any over-king being very few, and in great
part late. But when the stories of Etain and of Conary assumed their
present forms, when the writers of our romances formed them out of the