Thus it mingles together elements from all the periods.

The mention of the great caldron and the swine which always renew their food is purely mythological.

The cows which come from the Holy Land are Christian.

Ethne herself is born in the house of a pagan god who has become a Fairy King, but loses her fairy nature and becomes human; and the reason given for this is an interesting piece of psychology which would never have occurred to a pagan world.

She herself is a transition maiden, and, suddenly finding herself outside the fairy world and lost, happens on a monastery and dies on the breast of St Patrick.