Reconsidering the Ending of Tochmarch Etaine

Illustration by Stephen Reid

As part of relearning who I am and reclaiming my power as I age into different seasons of my life, sometimes I have to sit with uncomfortable truths. I've had one particular one in mind lately.

The last essay I ever wrote for Enchanted Living as the Senior Editor was a personal one. I spoke of the Irish myth of the faerie Etain. She was fey king Midir's beloved (and second) wife, and was transformed by his jealous first wife into a fly (or dragonfly). Swallowed by a human, the wife of a great warrior, Etain was reborn. As a mortal, she married King Eochaid, and then Midir finally found her and appeared to her in dreams, reminding her of her fey life. Through a series of challenges, Midir won the right to embrace her, and when he did so, they both transformed into swans and flew away.

By Walter Crane

As I detailed in my essay for the magazine, the story speaks to me about what Faerie feels like: this sense of knowing something I've felt before, this truth that comes from a different life I had forgotten until that moment. But what I tended to gloss over when I've always thought about this story in the past…is what comes next.

You see, Eochaid did not shake his fist and say "fair play, I guess I'll find another bride." He and his men set out for the hill where Midir's sidhe court resided, and started to dig. To get him to stop, Midir agreed to let Eochaid take Etain back. But when Eochaid arrived to claim her, an old hag presented him with fifty women who all looked like Etain. And Eochaid proudly and confidently staked his claim. It wasn't until later that Midir came to Eochaid and revealed to him that Etain had been pregnant when Midir disappeared with her as a swan from his court. And Eochaid had actually chosen his own daughter. 

It's all very revolting and disgusting, the last part of the story. But I've been pondering it again lately. I just finished listening to the audiobook of Honeysuckle by Bar Fridman-Tell, a retelling of the Welsh myth of Blodeuwedd, the woman made from flowers. The novel speaks to issues of autonomy, feminism, and toxic masculinity. (Proceed with caution if you want to read the novel, and heed trigger warnings.)

Returning to the story of Etain, I hold it up in the reflection of the Epstein files, of the revolting revelation that these rich men wanted the women, in fact girls, they went after to look as young as possible. And then there is this myth, the first version of which dates to 1106, in which Eochaid, in love with Etain, chooses the youngest of her (he thought) when offered a choice of fifty versions.

Art by Gustav DOre

I've seen a few posts online talking about how the shocking and appalling stories revealed in the files should remind all of us how many of our cultural standards of beauty and femininity are grounded in disturbing ideals of youth and pedophilia. No lessons I may try to learn from comparing a nearly milennium-old myth to the depravity revealed in those legal documents will fix what happened. Nothing I do can heal the pain of those who suffered at the hands of rich men with dark hearts. I can't make any of it not have happened. I am helpless to do anything more than continue calling for justice. 

This year I will be tipping the scale from midway between forty and fifty when I have my birthday at Midsummer. I already have ideas for how to celebrate when I reach the age of fifty. I want to get a beautiful nature-filled tattoo tracing spirals on my shoulders. I want to celebrate the idea that ageing means I become increasingly invisible to strangers, and therefore free to be whoever I want to be. But I don't have to wait four more years to start training my brain to unlearn the lessons that feminine beauty must be equated with youth. 

There are so many ways to be a woman. And the more we allow ourselves to be squeezed down into one narrow definition of what the singular ideal must be, the more control they have over us. Be wild. Be a woman who runs with wolves, who drifts with deer (credit to India Holton for that expression). Be a woman who traces the crease lines at the corners of her eyes with gold like kintsugi. Be as excited about each birthday as you were when you were eight years old.

Because truly, none of us can say with certainty whether or not this is the only chance we get at the wonder of life. Why spend it chasing something as ephemeral as youth? Why spend it trying to live up to ideals that were written by a gender with which you don't even identify? By a system that grows rich on feeding you discontent, the desire to chase something you'll never quite attain? Step out of that line. Stand beside the old woman explaining the rules to Eochaid. And refuse to try to look exactly the same as you did when you were twenty or younger. You earned the freedom. Now go live, as free as a dragonfly.