LEGENDS
OF
IRELAND’S HEROIC AGE
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THE FORAY
OF
QUEEN MEAVE
AND OTHER
_LEGENDS OF IRELAND’S HEROIC AGE_
BY
AUBREY DE VERE
LONDON
KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, & CO., 1 PATERNOSTER SQUARE
1882
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PREFACE.
The ‘Foray of Queen Meave,’ the longest of the following poems, is
founded on and in substance represents the far-famed ‘Tain bo Cuailgné,’
a tale regarded by many Irish scholars as the great Irish epic of
ancient times, by others as a part only of some larger epic of which
numerous portions remain, but which unhappily found no Pisistratus to
combine them into a whole. The lamented Professor Eugene O’Curry has
expressed his opinion that ‘in the time of Senchan and St. Columba’
(that is in the sixth century) ‘it was generally believed that Fergus
was the original writer of the tale.’[1] ‘On this supposition it must
have existed in a rudimental form a little before the Christian Era. It
was lost for several centuries, but recovered in the sixth, when,
according to the legend recorded by Professor O’Curry, St. Kiaran wrote
down the tale “in a book which he had made from the hide of his pet
cow--a book called the Leabhar na h-Uidré.”’[2] Elsewhere that great
authority states that a large portion of this work is preserved in a
copy ‘written at the same Clonmacnoise by a famous scribe named
Maelmire, who was killed there in 1106.’[3] That copy of St. Kiaran’s
version is still extant in the Royal Irish Academy, as well as a copy of
a later version included in the ‘Book of Leinster,’ a collection
compiled about 1150. Translations of both these versions have been made
by Professor O’Looney, and to both I have had access through his
kindness. These two versions differ much from each other, the earlier
being the simpler and stronger, while the later is the richer in detail.
To the sixth century belong not a few Irish works of unquestioned
authenticity, such as the elegy written by Dallan Forgaill on the death
of St. Columba, A.D. 592, found also in the Leabhar na h-Uidré. To an
earlier period, the fifth century, belongs the tract entitled the
‘Battle of Magh Tuireadh,’ or Moytura. Several poems are confidently
referred to Dubthach, chief Bard of King Laeghaire, St. Patrick’s
earliest convert at the Royal Court; and to the same century belongs the
Senchas Mor, or Compilation of Laws. The ‘Tripartite Life of St.
Patrick’ is attributed by Colgan and others to the sixth century,
because it mentions as still living many persons known to have died
before the close of that age. Books are recorded as having been in the
hands of the Druids before St. Patrick’s time, or soon after, such as
the ‘Cuilmenn,’ the ‘Sailtair of Tara,’ attributed to the third century,
the ‘Book of St. Mochta,’ one of St. Patrick’s early disciples, the
‘Book of Cuana,’ &c. There is consequently nothing to surprise us in the
circumstance that the ‘Tain bo Cuailgné’ belongs to a period so early.
The following poem, written of course in the character of an old Irish
bard, is not a translation except as regards some passages which occur
chiefly in Fragment III. It is not in the form of translation that an
ancient Irish tale of any considerable length admits of being rendered
in poetry. What is needed is to select from the original such portions
as are at once the most essential to the story, and the most
characteristic, reproducing them in a condensed form, and taking care
that the necessary additions bring out the idea, and contain nothing
that is not in the spirit, of the original.
An attempt to introduce to modern readers a work so ancient, and
connected with allusions so unfamiliar, seems to call for some remarks
on the character of that work, and on the age which produced it. The
‘Tain bo Cuailgné’ is especially valued, not only for its poetic merits,
but for the light which it throws upon early Irish customs, such as the
use of the war-chariot, abandoned, apparently, as early as the second
century. It marks strikingly the mutual relations of Ireland’s different
kingdoms, classes, and races. It is the amplest voice from Ireland’s
‘Heroic Age,’ thus belonging to the first, as the so-called ‘Ossianic’
poems belong to the second cycle of ancient Irish song. The latter cycle
derives its name from the circumstance that, though little of it can be
traced back to Ossian, it records the warriors of the Fianna Eireann who
were his contemporaries, and flourished in the second century. Yet even
they, scarcely excepting Diarmid, Oscar, and Fionn himself, though the
terror of Ireland’s provincial kings till their power, rendered too
exacting by long success, was extinguished by a single fatal reverse,
were never counted equal to the mighty ones of her earlier time.
The Heroic Age had reached its highest greatness shortly before the
Christian Era. It was then that Fergus Mac Roy reigned over Uladh, now
Ulster; but he renounced his throne, incensed at seeing his wily stepson
preferred to him, and was exiled because he had revenged the murder of
Usnach’s sons. Among the ancient Irish heroes he was the popular
favourite, princely in all his ways, magnanimous, truthful, just, and
not the less majestic because a man of mirth. His supplanter, Conor
Conchobar, was his opposite in all things, a man more sagacious, but
perfidious and implacable. At that time lived also Conal Carnach, and
his foster-son Cuchullain immeasurably the greatest of all Ireland’s
legendary warriors. His character is one so consistent and so original
that it suffices by itself to stamp the age which conceived it as high
among the most poetic of the world. Cuchullain has been called the
Achilles of early Erin; yet with the swiftness, the fierce impulse, and
indomitable might that belonged to the Greek, he blends in perfect
harmony qualities that remind us more of Hector. Like him, he is the
defender of the city, more inspired by patriotic zeal than even by his
love of glory: like him, he is generous, modest, forbearing to the weak.
It is to the strong only among his country’s foes that he is unpitying;
and even in his dealings with them there is no ferocity. They have to
die, and he slays them. He is reverent to both his parents--fiercely as
they were at variance with each other--to age, to woman; and about him,
even in his sterner moods, there plays often the joyous spirit of the
child. His devotion to Ferdīa is tenderer than that of Achilles to
Patroclus; but on him there has fallen a sterner duty. He has not to
avenge that friend, but to encounter and lay him low when the invader of
Uladh. The one blemish in Cuchullain’s life, his desertion of Aifné, his
boyhood’s love in Scatha’s Island, for a rival whose chief attraction
was perhaps that she could only be won by force of arms, is an episode
not included within the scope of the Tain. His lifelong aspiration was
fulfilled. A few years after the repulse of Meave, while the other
warriors of Ulster were engaged on an invasion of Alba (Scotland),
Cuchullain alone remained behind for the protection of his country.
Suddenly the forces of all the other kingdoms fell again upon the
northern land, stirred up by ancient hatred, and led on by a remnant of
Cailitin’s ‘Magic Clan.’ Cuchullain again held them at bay till the
return of the Ulster army: but it returned only in time to avenge his
death, still in the prime of youth, and to complete his work.
It has been remarked that in the characters of Homer--so absolutely true
are they to nature--the qualities which bear the same name are yet
essentially different qualities; as, for example, courage as illustrated
in Achilles and Ajax, in Diomed and in Hector. This mark of truthfulness
strikes us at once in the Tain. The kingly valour of Fergus, thoughtful
and serene, has nothing in common with the animal fearlessness of Lok
Mac Favesh, or the blind patriotic fury of Ketherne, and but little with
that of Ferdīa. In Cuchullain, courage is an inspiration descending from
above upon a being essentially emotional, and though always brave, yet
sensitive and capable of awe. We smile at the boundless admiration
lavished on strength by all early races; nor shall we understand it
aright while we suppose that it was, indeed, directed to mere physical
qualities. This was not so. Body and soul were not then thus carefully
discriminated; the heroic deed was attributed, not to the hand alone,
but to the warrior himself, his heart and his brain; and not to the man
only, but to some divine aid, his because deserved by him. Cuchullain is
the chief example of heroism thus conceived. He is slender as a maid;
but in the crisis of battle, when his spirit kindles, his stature
becomes gigantic. This close connection between the material and the
spiritual explains the rapidity with which the wounds of these legendary
heroes heal. Should there ever come a time when the spiritual is the
chief object of man’s reverence, the present adulation of mere intellect
will be looked on as we regard the enthusiasm bestowed on martial might
in days gone by.
The imaginative literature of early races wears a rough exterior; but as
we are told of a ‘latent heat,’ so there exists a latent thoughtfulness;
and it is often found unexpectedly in the depths of a tale which on its
surface reveals no disposition to deal with hard problems. The reader of
the Tain will be reminded of this truth in proportion as he understands
the relative position of the Irish kingdoms at the time it describes.
Connaught was the most barbaric as well as the poorest of them all;
while Ulster had even then reached that superiority in strength and
wealth, and in civilisation both civil and military, which for so many
centuries she retained. Her king was the subtlest and most powerful of
the Irish kings; and her celebrated ‘Red Branch Knights’ were the most
gallant order of Irish chivalry. The more astonishing, consequently, was
the utter prostration, a defeat without a battle, into which she so
suddenly fell. Without any apparent cause her strength changed to
weakness, and her wisdom to folly. It was the rebuke of her pride. At
the critical moment of her fortunes her great ones began to babble and
talk nonsense. All that their country had been they forgot; and the near
future they looked on through what the Tain calls ‘a mist of
imbecility,’ and attributes to witchcraft. Equally striking is the
change which takes place when the spell is reversed. The inferior nation
can neither use nor retain the advantages accidentally and dishonestly
gained, and defeat succeeds to triumph. I know of nothing else in poetry
which resembles this. Possibly it might be easier to find a parallel in
history.
The Tain, a work which, while abounding in passion, distinctly includes
an element of humour and irony, suffers nothing from a revulsion so
strange. It ends with a great event, a battle and an overthrow; and if
that catastrophe is but a ‘conclusion inconclusive,’ and no results
remain behind, in this very circumstance lies a special significance of
the work. To this issue the whole leads up, and the reader is not taken
by surprise. Throughout the tale he finds the same strange mixture of
ardent affections with causeless hatreds; of quick sympathies with
injustice and ferocity; of high daring with a blundering the consequence
not of incapacity, but of tortuous acuteness. Everywhere he finds the
contrast between the emotional in excess and an all but complete absence
of discipline, whether moral or mental. Such characteristics may last
for centuries, but the end is ever the same--exertions that amaze, and
abortive results. The only cause for surprise is that a moral so grave
should have been unconsciously bequeathed by an ancient work, written to
amuse, not instruct. The explanation is that a poem true to the time and
to the characters it commemorates, teaches by necessity what they teach.
The relation in which St. Kiaran stood to the Tain illustrates that of
the Christian priesthood to the imaginative traditions of Ireland. The
living bards and the clergy could not but be rivals, but it was often a
friendly rivalship; and as regards the bards of past centuries, there
was no room for jealousy. By degrees the clergy took an interest in the
ancient tales, and became attached to what they befriended. Amid many
extravagances they detected doubtless a significance which escapes the
half-closed eye of a cynic shrewdness. Occasionally they added to old
legends an interpolation which might have surprised those who had first
sung them. Thus we read that Cuchullain, when going forth to his last
battle, heard a choir of angels singing above that hill on which the
cathedral of Armagh was destined one day to stand; that he was pleased
by the anthem, and that his pleasure in it was accepted as a homage of
good-will. Elsewhere he is represented as fleeting in his war-car, after
death, above his beloved Emania. He sings,--
I played on breaths
Above the horses’ steam:
There used to be broken before me
Great battles on every side:
yet he ends with a warning to the race of man, and announces the day of
judgment.
The teachers of those days doubtless believed that religion could afford
to be indulgent towards minstrels who had been true to such lesser
lights as they possessed. Paganism in those days was too little
insidious to be dangerous. There is a paganism in literature much more
formidable than theirs; but it had not then manifested itself. It
belongs to that corrupted civilisation which uses against Christianity
those intellectual and imaginative gifts, as well as that social and
scientific progress, which it owes to Christianity alone. It belongs
also to that merely conventional civilisation which has scanty dealings
either with nature or with the supernatural. Nature, even in periods
branded as ‘barbaric,’ has qualities that indicate a sympathy with the
divine; for it has ardent affections, a simple refinement, singleness of
aim, a marvellous self-sacrifice, and those unblunted sensibilities,
both of love and reverence, without which the loftiest revealed truths
cease to have a meaning. The heroic at its highest stretches forth its
hands to the spiritual; and its very deficiencies are a confession that
it needs to be supplemented by a something higher than itself. We must
not confound the ‘savage’ state which has fallen beneath the dominion of
blind sense, with the ‘barbaric’ which has not yet ascended into the
clearer day, but which in its twilight has a gleam of coming morn. If
Ireland, once converted to the faith, filled the world with her
missions, there must have existed in her previously a thoughtfulness as
well as a fearlessness each of which found its way at last into the
nobler fields of enterprise. It is not unlikely that the apostle from
Clonmacnoise and Iona often cheered his way over the Northumbrian moors
or through the Teuton forest with a ballad about Cuchullain as well as
with a Latin hymn of Sedulius.
The mode in which the pagan legend sometimes put on a Christian
interpretation is especially illustrated in the ‘Children of Lir.’ Even
in its later form that tale is said to be anterior to the year 1000; but
as an oral tradition it probably existed, like the social and political
conditions it records, centuries before the Christian Era. A narrative,
at first but the record of some dreadful crime in a heathen household,
changed by degrees into a mystic hymn on the sanctity of childhood, its
capacity for the heavenly hope, its obedience, endurance, and fidelity,
its power through entire simplicity to find, in the strangest
affliction, purification only and a whiter innocence. Under the trials
of nine centuries those sufferers alone retain a perpetual childhood;
their father’s house, and the still lake before it, stand ever before
their imagination; and the burden of the years but falls on them for a
moment, to be flung aside for ever. Their ‘songs in the night season,’
the swan-song of a long dying, wafted over unstable waters for the
solace of the strong ones dwelling on the land, imply that the martial
bards of old knew in part the higher and serener function of poetry. It
is significant that while the sentenced belong to the earlier Tuatha de
Dannan race, the witch, while imprecating upon them the curse, addresses
them thus:--‘Ye of the white faces, of the stammering _Gael_.’
Apparently some bard of a later day resolved that these children of an
unblessed stock should be a prophetic anticipation of the Gael whose
boast was his faith. There was to be again a Ruth out of Moab, one not
gleaning amid the fields of promise, but scattering their earliest seed;
a Gentile with a faith not found in Israel, yet an Israelite indeed. A
prose translation of this tale, among the earliest at once and the most
signally modified of the Irish legends, was made by my early friend,
Gerald Griffin,[4] a man who, when certain to attain the first place
among Irish popular writers, passed it by for a humble one among the
‘Christian Brothers.’
The ‘Children of Lir’ is perhaps the chief memorial of that Tuatha de
Dannan race, which had held sway for two centuries before the invasion
of the Gael, and yet were themselves regarded as intruders by the
Firbolgs. Lir and Bove, Tuathan kings, were separated by seven centuries
from ‘Conn of the Hundred Fights.’ The great names of Tyr-Owen and
Tyr-Conel had not risen; and 1,800 years had to pass before the
foundations were laid of those abbeys and castles now in ruins. Yet
then, too, there were monuments. The Tuathan might have pointed out to
his Gaelic conqueror a cairn which still remains on the coast of Sligo,
that of Eochy, King of the Firbolgs. On the banks of the Boyne he might
have made boast of a huge sepulchral mound still shown to the traveller,
the tomb of Lewy, in whose veins the blood of the Tuatha was blended
with that of the earlier Fomorian pirates. We know not whether the
Dun-Aengus had yet lifted its ponderous masses on Aran Island; but two
centuries were to go by before Queen Macha traced the foundations of
Emania, and five before Queen Meave built the palace of Cruachan. It is
remarkable that while numerous Firbolg monuments, and in some places the
race itself, survive, the mediæval genealogies include no descent from
the Tuatha de Dannan. They are described as an unwarlike race that
worked in mines, and practised magical arts--arts through which, when
dispossessed by a stronger foe, they had ‘retired into invisibility,’
living an immortal life among hills and under lakes.
The ‘Children of Lir,’ and the ‘Sons of Usnach’[5] are two of those
tales which in Ireland were always known as ‘the Three Sorrows of Song.’
Critics who regard the ‘Tain bo Cuailgné’ but as a single fragment of a
great Irish epic, include the second among the remaining fragments. To
me it seems that each work is structurally complete in itself; but that,
in spirit, the two are strikingly unlike, the ‘Tain’ being essentially
epic, while the ‘Sons of Usnach’ is a tragedy cast in a narrative form.
The idea of fate enters into it as strongly as into any Greek play, its
heroine, the ‘Babe of Destiny,’ being, of all those who have a part in
the tale, the one least subdued by that destiny which she strives in
vain to avert. Those who charge the Irish race with a fatalism supposed
to be a mark of its Eastern origin, may point to this tale as a proof
that the characteristic is at least an ancient one.
It is natural to compare the Irish legends with those of other races. An
eminent Irish scholar asserts that the ‘Tain bo Cuailgné is to Irish
history what the Argonautic expedition, and the Seven against Thebes,
are to the Grecian.’ Landor’s ‘Hellenics’ represent many of the least
known Greek legends, and his ‘Gebir’ might be taken for a recovered
Greek ‘lesser epic;’ but with such poems the Irish legends can boast
little affinity. The best of the Roman have perished, except those which
Livy preserved by appropriating, and which, notwithstanding their large
element of fiction, constitute perhaps the most true, because the most
characteristic portion of the earlier Roman history. Between the Irish
and such Scandinavian legends as the celebrated ‘Story of the Volsungs
and Niblings’ there is one striking resemblance. In each case the
earliest existing prose version obviously represents a metrical work
earlier still, large fragments of which survive, cropping up in it like
sea rocks that indicate the hills submerged. In the ‘Tain’ many
passages, besides those which can be called poetical, thus hold their
own, apparently but because the trouble of altering them was thus
evaded. That Scandinavian tale has a keen-edged, concentrated might
about it, together with, at least in Mr. Morris’s translation, a
corresponding force and an exquisite beauty of style; and in these
respects I think it superior to the ‘Tain:’ but the latter will probably
be deemed by impartial readers to have the advantage in imagination,
varied conception of character, and pathos. As regards comparative
antiquity the ‘Tain’ must have preceded the Northern work by at least
six centuries. The latter includes a chapter, the fourteenth, entitled
‘The Welding together of the Shards of the Sword Grana,’ taken, as might
seem, from ‘The Knighting of Cuchullain,’ so close is the
resemblance--as close as that between the Spanish story of the ‘Monk and
the Bird,’ known to the English reader through Archbishop Trench’s
charming poem, and the Irish tale regarded as its original. The best
characteristics of Irish legends, a certain swiftness and daring, a
wildness of invention, a power that in its fiercest moods is often
subtly combined with grace, and a tenderness as often alternated with
humour, are found chiefly in the earlier. The highest inspiration of the
Bards seems to have passed away not long after Ireland became Christian.
‘Great Pan was dead,’--slain by the shaft of a mightier light. The
further back we go the higher is the imagination, the energy, and even
the art; the legends of the Heroic Age surpassing the mediæval in
refinement as much as in force, and the mediæval escaping the
extravagancies and vulgarities sometimes found in those of later days.
In ancient Ireland history and poetry had but a single Muse, and the
bard who professed to be ‘a maker’ would have found no listener. Through
all its changes the traditional legend claimed a foundation of truth,
and pointed ever to some unmeasured antiquity. In that early springtide
the hard and rugged March buds of Song were scarcely distinguishable
from the rough rind of fact out of which they had pushed.
The present work concludes a series of poems intended to illustrate
Irish history at its chief periods. The ‘Legends of St. Patrick’ deal
with Ireland’s ‘saintly time,’ and ‘Inisfail’ with those six centuries
between the Norman invasion and the repeal of the penal laws in the
latter half of the eighteenth century--a period calamitously
misrepresented by partisan historians; one in which the wild passions
and wilder political theories which, since the first French Revolution,
have in so many countries directed high aspirations to mean or fatal
ends, had no existence; a period of which ‘all the struggles were
characterised by the spirit of liberty, nor less by that of loyalty,
whether directed to Gaelic princes, to Norman chiefs who had become
Irish, to Charles, or James.’[6] Another period remained, that of
Ireland’s ‘Heroic Age.’ This volume is a contribution to its
illustration. I trust that the poets of a later day will illustrate it
more worthily, and do for Irish history what the lofty and stainless
poetry of Scott did for that of his country. The theme is large; and the
quarry, so rich in materials, is as yet scarcely opened. Notwithstanding
the destruction of numberless Irish books which certainly existed as
late as 1631, and the yet larger number known to have been extant in the
eleventh century, besides the vast collections which perished during the
Danish invasions, we are informed that the Irish books still preserved
in Trinity College, Dublin, and the Royal Irish Academy would alone fill
30,000 quarto pages. These volumes exist, almost all of them, in MS.
only; while a few, which, without State aid or any public encouragement,
have been translated, remain unprinted--a circumstance not honourable
either to Ireland’s patriotism, or to that love of learning once her
boast. A mere fragment of the remaining surplus from the Irish Church
property would restore to light all the best specimens of ancient Irish
genius for the benefit not of Ireland’s sons only, but of learning in
all lands; and she has still scholars competent to the task. Those who
cannot study the originals may wish to know where they may find some
valuable translations. Several have appeared in the ‘Atlantis,’ a
periodical established in connection with the Catholic University of
Ireland when Cardinal Newman was its rector, in the publications of the
‘Ossianic Society,’ of the ‘Irish Archæological and Celtic Society,’ and
of the ‘Kilkenny Archæological Society.’ The English reader is more
likely to be already acquainted with Dr. O’Donovan’s great translation
of the ‘Annals of the Four Masters;’ with the works of Dr. Petrie, of
Dr. Todd, and Dr. Reeves; with the ‘Tripartite Life of St. Patrick,’
translated, as well as many ancient tales, by Mr. W. M. Hessessy; with
Dr. Joyce’s ‘Old Celtic Romances;’ and with Mr. Standish O’Grady’s
brilliant bardic ‘History of Ireland.’ How entirely early Irish legends
are susceptible of a high poetic rendering in our own day can be doubted
by no one who has read the poems founded on them which we owe to the
genius of Sir Samuel Ferguson.[7]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CONTENTS.
PAGE
THE SONS OF USNACH 1
THE CHILDREN OF LIR 71
THE FORAY OF QUEEN MEAVE:
Prologue 117
1. The Cause of the Great War 119
2. The Deeds of Cuchullain 143
3. The Combat at the Ford 160
4. The Invasion of Uladh 183
5. Queen Meave’s Retreat 201
NOTES 231
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE SONS OF USNACH
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TO THE MEMORY
OF
EUGENE O’CURRY,
FIRST PROFESSOR OF IRISH HISTORY IN THE
CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF IRELAND,
THIS POEM
IS DEDICATED.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_THE SONS OF USNACH._
CANTO THE FIRST.
In Felim’s house they kept the royal feast,
And all the echoing hall with tumult rang,
Tumult that still from morn to eve increased;
And now the tale they told, and now they sang.
Chief minstrel he to Conor, Uladh’s[8] lord,
Who graced that day, as oft, his favourite’s board.
Sudden to Felim’s seat a woman rushed,
An ancient nurse with wrinkled face and worn
Clamouring, her hands upheld and forehead flushed,
‘Felim, rejoice! for lo, thy babe is born!
And proud be thou, for goodlier is this child
Than e’er till now on proudest parent smiled!’
These tidings heard, yet higher swelled the acclaim;
The Red Branch Knights oft pledged that infant’s health,
And prayed that all high gifts of wealth and fame,
Great lordship, and great valour, and great wealth
Might grace its life, and in the far-off days
Compass its head with everlasting praise.
But when an hour had passed, and somewhat more,
The feasters heard far off a dulcet strain,
And soon to them there entered damsels four;
With measured step advanced they twain by twain,
Bearing a cradle. On a low-raised throne
They reared it, bowered in silk, and blossom-strewn.
Therein a little maiden-wonder lay
Unlike all babes besides in mien and hue,
Bright as a lily-bud at break of day
That flashes through the night’s unlifted dew:
Beaming her eyes; like planets glad and fair:
And o’er her forehead curved a fringe of hair.
The tender fairy hand, whose substance fine
Glimmered as of compacted moonbeams made
With such a stealthy smoothness did it shine,
Above the coverlet unquiet strayed;
And some one said, ‘It knows the things to be,
And seeks its wand of destined empery!’
From bannered stalls the Red Branch Knights drew nigh
Circling that cradle. ’Neath the raftered roof
A far-sunk window opened to the sky,
While purple twilight wove with warp and woof
O’er deepening heavens its dewy mantle dark,
And dusking woods, that hour unseen; when, hark
Outside that casement rang a piercing wail;
Then, past it slow, a dread and shrouded Form
On demon wings was seen of all to sail:
Shriek after shriek out-swelled into a storm:
And o’er that flower new-born of infancy
All heard the Banshee’s death-denouncing cry.
Then, from his seat in that high hall remote
Whereon all day in silence he had sate
Advanced, unguided, to that Infant’s cot
Cathbad, the Druid old, and man of Fate,
And o’er that infant held his arms out-spread,
And raised to heaven his grey and sightless head
At last he spake, ‘This day a woe to man,
And yet the crown of woman’s kind, is born:
This day is sent a blessing and a ban;
She shall be black as night, and white as morn;
And lo, upon her cheek I see such red
As stains great warriors on the war-field dead.
‘A death to mighty hosts that face shall be:
Through her a king shall pass to banishment:
Through her shall perish Usnach’s peerless Three;
Through her from sacred Eman’s[9] roofs fire-rent
Even now I see the reddening smoke-cloud leap:
Deirdré her name. Through her shall widows weep.’
King Conor heard, and in his angry mood
Had risen to speak her doom; ‘That child shall die!’
Save that the Uladh nobles where they stood
The king forestalling, hurled abroad their cry;
‘She must not live!’ Of all those knights but two
Will’d not that deed--the bravest Erin knew.
For at that hour upon the cradle’s right
Stood Conal Carnach; at its left, though young,
Swifter in chase, and stronger yet in fight,
Cuchullain. Neither swelled that shout of wrong.
Once more it rose: but Conor ne’er was known
To walk in any counsel save his own.
He spake: ‘She shall not die: this babe I take,
My ward, until her destinies be known:
An isle tower-girt is mine in yonder lake:
There shall she live; and there shall live alone:
By none that fatal beauty shall be seen:
Full-grown the maid perchance may be my queen.’
Wondering they heard, but no man made reply,
For Conor’s will was lord to all and each,
A man of counsel deep, and purpose high,
In action sudden, sparing of his speech:
Early he won the people to his will:
Ere long they feared him: but they loved him still.
While yet a child, the stepson of that king
Who reigned in Uladh, Fergus son of Roy,
Conor had shared his home. That prince would bring
Oft to his judgment court Queen Nessa’s boy
Whose forward wit unravelled every suit,
Delighting in the wrangling clan’s dispute.
Fergus was loftier-minded: ever more
He loathed the sordid plea, the varnished wrong,
And inly scorned the Ollamb’s learnèd lore:
More dear to him the chase, the feast, the song:
Wearied one day, he cried with laughing face,
‘Conor! speak thou the judgment in my place!’
The boy made answer none; but instant bowed,
And judgment gave so full, so just, so clear,
A shout rang upward from the astonished crowd,
‘Worthy of kingship thou!’ His crowned compeer,
Fergus arose; incensed he made reply;
‘Throne him your king, if worthier he than I!’
Conor since then had ruled the Ulidian race,
And ever waxed in subtlety and power,
Though better loved was Fergus’ honest face,
And princely port, forth issuing from his tower
At times with horse and hound to chase the boar,
Crowning at times the topmost ridge of war.
Conor was loved and feared: one clan alone
Nor feared, nor loved him, Usnach’s: and the king
In Usnach’s house a rival to his throne
Or noting, or belike imagining,
Still watched that house to crush it, had he dared;
But Uladh loved it, and her monarch spared.
Meantime to that green island in the lake
The years came softly: softly went they by
As like as snowy flake to snowy flake,
As like as smile to smile, as sigh to sigh;
And as some flower that feeds on beams and dew
Its inmate rose in beauty ever new,
Deirdré. With her abode an ancient dame,
The tale-recounter of the royal court
In years departed; Levarcam her name:
None other to that island made resort
Save now and then treading the downward rocks
Some shepherd with the firstling of his flocks.
Beauteous as heaven that gladsome captive was;
With every month more fair, more gladsome grew;
Her pastime, counting jewels in the grass,
Emerald and amethyst, and sapphire blue,
Or chasing--never part had she in sloth--
From bloom to bloom the evening-gilded moth.
Impassioned friendships hers with every kind:
To her the Robin came; to her the Hare;
And still with insight flashed from heart to mind,
She guessed their lives in tree or bosky lair,
Sharing their vernal joys, and, when the snows
Besieged their haunts, condoling with their woes.
Inquisitive the creature was, and brave:
From rock to rock alone she roamed; untaught
She knew to climb the tree and swim the wave;
Soaring and swift, for knowledge still she sought,
Nor sought in vain, far wiser than she wist;
Infantine minstrel, and mythologist.
For when she heard the wintry tempests raving,
Fables she told of immemorial feuds,
And warring Gods that still, for vengeance craving,
Devastated some rival’s peaceful woods;
And when the morning shone, serene and mild,
She laughed and said, ‘These Gods are reconciled!’
Betwixt that island and the forest green
A causeway stretched. Scorning King Conor’s law,
O’er it in summer maidens tripped unseen,
And told her tales of all they heard and saw,
And flowers in May, and fruits in summer brought her,
Or with her danced beside the moonlit water.
Two men alone she saw; at times the king:
His grizzled beard and searching eye she fled,
And wept to think that in some far-off spring
She must be his. That thought alone with dread
Touched her keen instinct. In that face august
Something unblest she saw, and ill to trust.
Yet oft he came, watching that flower of beauty
That still from crude, reluctant bud emerged;
And citing still past vow, and future duty
Impledged thereby; and still with presents urged;
And ever reaped for such more scoffs than gain--
Officious is his zeal whose hope is vain!
The other visitor she better loved,
A Druid, silver-headed: to her isle
Daily he came, a teacher well-approved;
And much he taught her, with his grave calm smile
Advancing still into his pupil’s heart:
To elicit thence, he knew, was to impart.
He taught her all a monarch’s bride had need
In those old days to learn. Devout and grave,
He taught her all the Ogham signs to read,[10]
Inscribed on mossy stone or mystic stave;
And how to trace green Erin’s Kings, each one
To Heber or Heremon, Ir, or Donn.
One morn as on their glories he descanted,
‘Where are they now?’ his wondering listener said;
Then silent stood, like shape to stone enchanted:
But when he answered sadly, ‘They are dead,’
She bounded t’ward the on-wavering butterfly,
And cried, ‘At least he lives; and so do I!’
Once too she caught that Druid by the sleeve,
And spake; ‘Great Master, this I ask of thee!
Who was it made the sun, the morn and eve,
The stars, the flying clouds, the boundless sea?’
Her great wide eyes, clasped hands, and lips compressed,
Better than words enforced the unending quest.
The Druid answered, dubious, still refining
With stress and strain of profluent words that left
The problem’s jet-black surface smooth and shining
But ne’er the mystery’s heart of marble cleft,
And ended; ‘God is God:--but ah, the woe!
That which God is, not even the Druids know!’
‘Then God must be a God who hides Himself
In sport, or else for cause we know not of!
And doubtless,’ thus ran on the careless elf,
‘Who hides in sport will show His face in love;
Much seeking will not find Him. He will come
Then when He wills; and take His children home.
‘For I remember once in yonder wood
My nurse, to mock me, hid her in an oak,
Whilst idly I a dragon-fly pursued:
I missed her soon: I wept: then forth she broke!
Thus likewise God, hearing His creatures moan,
Will flash on them, and cry, “Mine own, mine own!”
‘That day the wise will serve Him; but the fool
Will sport with Ogham stave, or dragon-fly
That lights his spark--lo there--on dusky pool!
Of those that sport at once, and serve am I!
Therefore, come quickly, God! And thou, good stave,
Fly hence!’ And forth she flung it on the wave!
But when she found within the Master’s face,
Not wrath--for that she looked--but awe-struck woe,
A change there passed, too swift for eye to trace,
Athwart her rain-dark eyes, and front of snow;
And straight the child, by love’s remorse possessed,
Kissed with her whole bright face that Druid’s breast.
The years passed by; and, onward as they sped,
That child from beauty still to beauty grew;
In her, full many a fair one came and fled
Like sunny gleams that each the last pursue;
And yet that glad succession brought no change;
Each child in turn was wilful, sweet, and strange.
Older, beyond her island bounds she strayed
Despite the king; for, ever since her birth,
Of nought that tender heart had been afraid:
Banshee, or ghost, she heard of, now with mirth,
And now with awe, but never with affright;
And gladly would have faced them if she might.
Not so old Levarcam! a spasm of dread
Oft blanched her cheek remembering Conor’s word,
‘Keep safe the child, or forfeit is thy head!’
In Deirdré’s absence, if a leaf but stirred
She shook; and endless tales, and legends told
To keep her young lamb safe within the fold.
She told how first, from regions of the morn
With black-sailed ships stemming the ocean tide
To Erin’s forest, yet of men forlorn,
Came Partholan, the Grecian Parricide:
And how the ill race had perished. Deirdré cried
With reddening cheek; ‘Glad am I that they died!’
Then, with a brightening in her old, pale face,
Her nurse resumed: ‘But we--the Gael--but we,
The offspring are we of a lordlier race,
The heirs of some diviner destiny!
King Miledh was our sire! From far Espán
His dauntless sons led forth the Gaedil clan.’
Of Scota next she told, the widowed Queen;
And how that sad one left her lonely throne
Girt by eight sons; and how, with eye serene,
She marked above the wine-black ocean prone
The monsters rise; nor feared to watch the wave
Heaven-high, anon descending to its grave.
Time on her brow had graved no characters;
Sorrow no splendour stol’n from that wide eye
That ever, as the legend old avers,
Reposed on some far seat of sovereignty
By others hoped;--to her alone revealed
Beyond sea-cloud, and ocean’s heaving field.
She saw the waves engulf the drowning decks;
Yet nought could scare that eye, or blanch that cheek:
Four sons she saw upon their mastless wrecks
High driven on Erin’s rocks and headlands bleak
From Inver Scena to the house of Donn:
She said; ‘The price is paid; the Isle is won!’
She saw the victory’s prelude and no more;
Half-way ’twixt ocean marge and mountain crest
Where sleep the Great Ones of the days of yore
Early she made her venerable rest,
And holds, well-pleased, an ever-spreading fame,
Sealing a mighty people with her name.[11]
Not all the themes were war: the fabler told
Of Feale, the dusk-eyed beauty of the South,
By Lewy won mid olive forests old:
Such minstrelsies went freshening from his mouth
That in his hand her own the princess placed,
Nor feared, his wife, to dare the wan sea-waste.
She told how, later, by that northern tide
A blush of causeless shame her cheek had stained;
And how, heart-grieved at fancied wrong, she died,
Where wrong was none; and how her husband plained
Year after year, while she, at Scota’s feet,
Rested revered where earth and ocean meet.
Next told she how for Tara’s King they found
No consort worthy of the royal bed
From east to west through Erin’s utmost bound;
And how, dream-warned, the youth had northward sped:
And how, from fountain-bower by Fairy Brugh,
A white maid looked on him with eyes of blue.
And how that beauteous phantom, Eadane,
Had laid a hand like light upon his hair;
And next, lest he should die of yearnings vain,
Assumed a woman’s form, though woven of air;
And borne him pretty babes within their bower;
Yet ofttimes bade him ’ware the destined hour.
And how at Tara, while the nobles sate
Gracing his feast, that queen sent forth a cry:
And how the Fairy-King through guards and gate
Passed swiftly, mailed in dew-like jewelry,
And like a whirlwind bore in sight of all,
The Fairy Princess to her father’s hall!
While thus the tales ran on, the years ran by,
Tales, some of sadness, some of mirth and jest,
Till now the child to maiden prime was nigh:
The tales of war and wonder pleased her best:
The love-tales well began, no doubt: yet all
Ended, she thought, in something slight and small.
And still whate’er she heard of good and pure
Within the virgin’s memory held its place
Like names on tree-stems graved that aye endure:
Of questionable things survived no trace:
They passed, like letters written in a rill
That upward laughs to heaven, re-virgined still.
One day it chanced that, while the March wind’s breath
Was softening round the daffodil’s first bud,
Their shepherd old had saved a lamb from death,
And slain the wolf, and in their gateway stood;
And, as the wounded creature bled, below
A crimson blood-pool stained the last night’s snow.
Sudden there swooped to earth a raven black,
And feasted on that blood. As in a dream
The maiden watched it long: at last she spake,
Whilst o’er her grave face ran a laughing gleam,
‘These be Love’s colours, black and red, and white;--
Yet love we know, is nought, when judged aright!
‘These be Love’s colours, white and black, and red:--
Some little foolish maid, to love inclined,
Might say: “Though all should love me none shall wed
Until in one dear face those three I find;
Not raven locks alone, or front of snow,
But on the heroic cheek the battle’s glow!”’
Beside the girl stood Levarcam; she smiled,
And spake; ‘Good sooth, your shaft hath hit its mark;
Yea doubtless, you were born a prophet’s child!
For Naisi’s front is white, his tresses dark;
And still of him men say; “On Naisi’s cheek
Not roses, but red dawns of battles break!”’
Then to the flash from Deirdré’s peerless eyes
Her nurse made answer; ‘Naisi! who is he?
Warrior there treads not under Erin’s skies
But knows the man! the swiftest of those Three!
No hounds they need! alone they chase, each morn,
The stag, and downward drag him head and horn!
‘Ever at Uladh’s feasts the clansmen say
“Set ye the sons of Usnach side by side,
A rock behind them, or some cromlech grey,
Then blow a trump o’er Erin, far and wide;
And range her hosts against them, face to face,
Those Three shall hew them down, and homeward chase!”
‘Their singing is the best all Uladh boasts;
Of all her sons most courteous they and kind;
To heaven devoutest of her countless hosts:
Softly along his path they lead the blind;
Submission made, no more remember ill;
Nor ever kissed a maid against her will.
‘To these the clans send embassies from far
Laden with gifts, and suing, “Grant us aid!
Rule us in battle’s hour, and head our war!”
But women say, “How well their mother prayed
For sons both mild and valiant!” Lo, a ray
Of her sweet countenance lives in theirs this day!’
Here Levarcam a moment stopped for breath;
Then Deirdré rose and sought the neighbouring strand:
Ice-bound it was, and cold that hour as death:
To her ’twas warm as mead by May breeze fanned:
She paced along its pebbly beach for hours;
And to her feet its shingles felt like flowers.
Returned, more lofty looked she than at morn;
With more of inward gladness, yet less gay;
More confident, though lost her girlish scorn
In some half womanhood’s benigner ray:
Smiling, she met her nurse’s smile, and then
‘Naisi,’ she said, ‘will love me! Who cares when?’
The maiden paused; she mused; again she spake,
Fixing on Levarcam those marvellous eyes;
‘Three be Love’s colours--white, and red, and black:
White, for the sake of Love’s white sanctities;
And red, for Love must war on many a foe;
And black, since Love, though crowned, must end in woe.’
Again she mused:--‘Yes, Love must war! Who fears?
Though Love must fight, he fights in love, not hate!
Some glorious conflict rages through the years;
Great Love must take therein his part, elate.
And woe comes last. On raven pinions borne
Night comes not less:--but after night comes morn!’
From that time Naisi’s name she named no more;
Nothing she seemed to lack; nothing to crave:
Her heart through spiritual realms was strong to soar,
Self-lifted as from windless seas the wave;
A spirit of strength from earthly bonds escaped
She trod; her body’s self but spirit draped;
A Spirit of strength and swiftness onward borne
Through luminous realms, all resonant and free,
Happier because unwinged, like endless morn
With silver feet circling the spherèd sea:
And still her lonely thought with song was blent;
And bird-like still she warbled as she went.
For music then, like warfare, not from art
Grew up laborious:--born of frank good-will,
’Twas Joy’s loud clarion in the generous heart;
Through pains more perfect grew the harper’s skill;
Yet still from purest soul, and noblest breast
The minstrelsy perforce became the best.
Deirdré besides, on Naisi’s music musing--
That strain far-famed she once had heard in dream--
Through some strange craft of Nature’s sweet infusing
Unconscious copied it. A lily’s gleam
Shines thus, reflected in the lake below,
More softly, green for green, and snow for snow.
Once too she marked two mated eagles flying
Far from their cliff, her little lake above,
Sunward in strength, and clapped her hands loud crying,
‘On, wedded Spirits, on! for this is Love!
No woodland murmurs yours, and thraldom none!
Sail on till buried in the ascending sun!’
That vision shaped her life. Through wild and wood
Long hours that morn had Naisi chased the stag:
It took the wave and vanished. Silent stood
At noon the hunter on a jutting crag:
His eye upon a tower-crowned island fell;
Thereon it fastened, bound as by a spell.
‘There lies,’ he mused, ‘that wondrous-countenanced child,
Like some poor bird a captive from its birth,
In that lone island year by year exiled:
How little she suspects her grace and worth!
Our household foe ere long will clutch that hand--
Is yon a causeway leading to the land?’
An hour had fled, and lo! that bridge he paced;
Ere long, no child, but, sparkling like a flower,
The imprisoned maid, nor startled nor shame-faced,
Passed by the youth, advancing from her bower
With breeze-like step, yet down-dropp’d lids of snow:
‘Ah foot,’ he cried, ‘more light than foot of doe!’
An instant back she flashed her magic eyes
And from her laughing lip the answer leaped,
‘Where stags are none, the doe must monarchise!’
Some ballad old it was, but never steeped
Till then with such strange sweetness to his ear:
Was it reproof or challenge, vague yet dear?