Preface
Capture of Troy.[1] The romances of this group are among the oldest Irish romances which we possess, and were put into their present form at various periods between the seventh and the tenth centuries; but they are based on traditions which are certainly older, and show traces of a pre-Christian origin. The leading idea of the romances is the state of open or concealed warfare between the kingdoms of Ulster and of Connaught; the principal characters being Conachar (or Conor), king of Ulster; Cuchulainn, Conall, and other Ulster champions; Medb (or Maev), queen of Connaught, with her husband Ailill; and Fergus Mac Roy, the exiled king of Ulster, who in many of the stories is a refugee at the
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- ↑ The dates given to this period by early authorities, or by later writers who had access to old records which now are lost, differ widely; and dates given to different events are often inconsistent. The date, for instance, when the father of Queen Maev succeeded to the kingship over all Ireland, is given by the Annals of the Four Masters (a.d. 1630) as 137 b.c., by Flann of Monasterboice (11th century) as 56 b.c., and by O'Flaherty in his Ogygia as 27 b.c. Conor and the other personages in the romances are not mentioned at all in the Annals of the Four Masters; but the date of the death of Conor is given by Tighernach (a contemporary of Flann) as a.d. 48, while his birth is usually assigned to a.d. 1. It is difficult to reconcile these dates with the date of Maev's father, but it is as useless to try to reconcile the dates relating to the Ulster heroes as it would be to explain the different accounts of Helen of Troy, who, according to a very old legend, was carried off by Theseus in the days of the fathers of the men who fought for her under the Trojan walls.
