#etain

In Brief Lives, we hardly get to know her and then she’s gone: a somewhat ancient Irish woman, maybe one of the fair folk, who senses something is off and just about manages to get out of her flat before it blows up (thanks to whatever Destruction has set up with his “early warning system” 🙄). She escapes in her underwear and with just her purse. And “of the Second Look” is definitely a hint at her gift of sight. But it’s also more than that if you know where to… look (ugh). And of course we’re looking (half-Celtic woman alert, I won’t shut up about characters rooted in my folklore 🤣)…

Étaín (pronounced Eh-daeen [old Irish] or Eh-deen [slightly more modern pronunciation]) is a character from the Irish Mythological Cycle “Tochmarc Étaíne” (The Wooing of Étaín). She is the wife of Midir who is one of the Tuatha Dé Danann, and we are just assuming she’s as godlike as him. But she’s really human (even if some people will tell you online she’s also Tuatha Dé in her first life, but I guess they haven’t read the Tochmarc?). I think the idea that she’s fae comes from the fact that the Tuatha Dé Danann are generally residing in the Otherworld but are quite involved with humans, and also that the portals to “our” world (the sídhe) are something we often associate with fae. And in later folklore, the Tuatha Dé are called Aes Sídhe, and those are pretty much the fae most people know.