traditions which descended to them from pro-Christian sources, both
cycles of tradition were pretty well known; and there was a natural
tendency to introduce personages from one cycle into the other,
although these personages occupy a subordinate position in the cycle to
which they do not properly belong. Even Conall Cernach, who is a
fairly prominent figure in the tale of the death of Conary, has little
importance given to him compared with the people who really belong to
the cycle, and the other warriors of the Heroic Age mentioned in the
tale are little but lay figures compared with Conary, Ingcel, and Mac
Cecht. A wish to connect the two cycles probably accounts for the
connection of Lugaid Red-Stripes with Cuchulain, the introduction of
Conor and Ailill into the story of Etain may be due to the same cause,
and there is no need to suppose that the authors of our versions felt
themselves bound by what other men had introduced into the tale of
Conary. The practice of introducing heroes from one cycle into another
was by no means uncommon, or confined to Ireland; Greek heroes' names
sometimes appear in the Irish tales; Cuchulain, in much later times,
comes into the tales of Finn; and in Greece itself, characters who
really belong to the time of the Trojan War appear in tales of the
Argonauts.


[FN#5] A short account of this is in the story of King Dathi (O'Curry
Lectures, p. 286). The tale seems to be alluded to in the quatrain on
p. 10 of this volume.


There are very few corresponding allusions to personages from the small
Etain cycle found in the great cycle of romances that belong to the
Heroic Age, but MacCecht's name appears in a fifteenth-century