The Up-bringing of Deirdre
As soon as she was weaned, King Conor took the child away from her
own parents, as was the custom in those olden days, and put her out
to foster with a nurse, Levarcam, a wise and skilful dame, who told
the King from day to day how Deirdre fared. And for the first seven
years Deirdre grew up within the royal household, petted and loved
by all, and she was richly fed and robed in silk, and nourished
like a princess, for all in the palace knew that this young lovely
child was destined to be mated with their king. Often she spent her
days upon the playing fields, and watched the boy-corps practising
their sports, and joined their games and laughed with glee like
any other child. Thus happily and gaily passed the years for
Deirdre, till one day when she was playing ball among the little
lads, the King came down to watch their play. He saw how like a
flower Deirdre grew, half like the opening daisy, pink and white,
half like the slender hairbell on its stem, graceful and delicate;
and though he was an old man, and had been a widower for now many
years, and the child but a babe of seven years, a sudden jealousy
smote at his aged heart. He saw the girl surrounded by the lads,
who tossed the ball into her little lap or into her small apron
held out to catch it as it fell. And every time she caught it, her
ringing childish laugh broke out, and all the boys cried, “Well,
caught, O Deirdre; bravely caught, our little Queen!” For to them
all, it was well-known that this small child was kept by Conor for
himself, to share his throne and home; so oft in play they called
her “Little Queen.”
Then Conor called his Druid Caffa to him, and he said, “Too long
we leave this child at liberty among the chieftain’s sons. She
must henceforth be kept apart and quite forget that there are
younger men than you or me. If she grows up among these lads, most
certainly the day will come when she will wish to wed some chief of
her own age. See, even now, the lads bend to her will; she rules
them like a queen indeed, and gladly they obey her. When she is
grown to maidenhood, small chance for me, an aged man, when comes
the time to woo.”
“The King woos not,” said Caffa, “he commands, and none dare
disobey.” “Still I would rather have a willing bride,” the King
replied; “I want no girl to be my royal mate who craves and hankers
for some other man among my subjects. She shall come to me of her
own free will, because she knows no other man but me. She shall not
even know what kind of thing a man may be, for I will shut her up
apart from men, and, save yourself and me, she shall not ever see a
manly face.” “The King commands,” said Caffa, slowly, “and it must
be done as he desires. But yet I fear the maid will pine in her
captivity. The bride you wed will be a lily pale as death, and not
a maiden in her blooming loveliness.”
“She shall have space and air and garden-ground,” the King replied,
“only she shall not ever see a human face, save yours and mine, and
nurse Levarcam’s.”
So for the girl he built a place apart, far off from Emain in
a lonely dell, surrounded by a wood. A simple stately house
was reared, surrounded by an orchard of rare fruits. Behind the
house a garden and a piece of barren moor, and through the wood
a gently-flowing stream that wandered amid carpets of bright
flowers. And all seemed fair enough, but round the place he built
a mighty wall, so high that none could climb it, and a moat ran
round within. Four savage man-hounds sent by Conor were on constant
guard, watching on every side by night and day, so that no living
thing could enter or pass out, save with the knowledge of Levarcam.
And for a time the child was happy, for Levarcam, the wise woman,
taught her all she knew. She taught her how each bird sings to its
mate, each different note of thrush or cuckoo or the soaring lark;
she taught her of the plants that spring towards heaven, their
roots deep hidden in the yielding soil, and of their names and
uses, and the way they fructified and sent out shoots, and of the
fruits they bore. And in the solemn night, they went abroad and
watched the motion of the stars, and marked the wandering planets
how they carved out their own path among the rest, and all the
changes of the moon the maiden knew, and how to calculate the time
of day by shadows on the grass. There was no bird upon the spray,
nor herb among the plants, nor star in heaven, but Deirdre had a
name for each and all.
And ever and anon, King Conor came and sat with her and talked, and
brought her gifts to while away the time; and because the days were
long and passed one like the other without any change, she liked
his coming, and would call him “Father,” and make tales for him,
and sing her songs and show the little garden she had made herself
alone.
And Deirdre grew up tall and stately as the sapling of the forest,
and lithe as the green moorland rush that bows before the wind.
Of all the women of the world was Deirdre the gentlest and best,
lovely of form and lovely in her mind; light as the hind that leaps
upon the hill, and white and shapely as the snowy swan. But though
they tended her, and fed her with the best, the maiden drooped and
pined. And on a day Levarcam said, “What ails thee, girl? Why is
thy face so pale, thy step so slow? Why dost thou sigh and mope?”
And Deirdre said, “I know not, nurse, what ails me; but I think
I should be well if once again I saw the boys upon the playing
fields, and heard their shouts, and tossed the ball with them.”
“Fie, fie,” replied the nurse, “’tis seven full years since on the
green you played at ball. A child of but seven years were you at
that time, and now full fourteen years have come and gone, and you
are growing into maidenhood.” “Seven bitter years,” said Deirdre,
“since I beheld the joyous playing field, and saw the sports, and
marked the manly face of Naisi, noblest and bravest of the corps of
boys.”
“Naisi, the son of Usna?” asked Levarcam, much surprised. “Naisi
was his name, he told me so,” said Deirdre; “but I did not ask
whose son he was.” “He told you so?” Levarcam asked again. “He
told me so,” said Deirdre, “when he threw the ball, by a mis-cast,
backward, across the heads of the group of maidens who were
standing on the edge of the green, and I rose up among them all,
picked up the ball, and gave it back to him. He pressed my hand and
smiled, and promised he would see me oft again; but never since
that day, that fatal day, when Conor brought me to this lonely
place, have he or I beheld each other more. Bring Naisi here, O
nurse, that I may once again behold his face, so bright and boyish,
with its winning smile; then shall I live and laugh and love my
life again.”
“Speak not like this, O Maiden,” exclaimed the nurse. “To-day the
King comes for his visit. We are in winter now, but in the budding
of the spring, he takes you hence to Emain, there to claim you as
his wife.”
“The king no doubt is kind,” the girl replied, “and means me well,
but he is old and grey, and in his face is something that I do not
like. I think he could be cruel, and that if any man stood in his
way, he would not hesitate to lay a trap to catch him, as Caffa
snared the little mouse that ran about my room and kept me company.
Yet will I go with him to Emain, for I think that somewhere among
the people of the court, I shall find Naisi out.”
“Hush, hush,” the nurse replied, “Naisi is now a little boy no
longer, but the foremost of all Ulster’s younger chiefs, the hero
of the Red Branch, and the favourite of the King. Speak not of
Naisi to King Conor, or mayhap some harm will come to him.” “Then
will I never speak his name, or tell of him,” the girl replied,
“though in my dreams I see him every night playing at ball with me;
but when he flings the ball for me to catch, ’tis ever the same
thing. King Conor comes between and seizes it, and throws it back
at Naisi. So can I never catch and hold it in my hands, and I am
vexed and weep. But last night, O good nurse, King Conor flung the
ball craftily at his head, and Naisi fell all red and stained with
blood, like that poor calf that Caffa slew, thinking that I could
eat it for my food. The little tender calf that played with me!
Upon the winter’s frosty floor I saw its blood, all crimson-red
upon the driven snow, and as I looked I saw a raven that stooped
down to sip the blood; and, O dear nurse, I thought of Naisi then,
for all his hair, as I remember it, was dark and glossy like the
raven’s wing, and in his cheeks the ruddy glow of health and
beauty, like the blood, and white his skin like snow. Dear nurse,
dear nurse, let me see Naisi once again, and send the King away.”
“Alas! alas!” Levarcam said; “most difficult indeed is thy desire,
for far away is Naisi, and he dare not come within this fort.
High is the wall and deep the moat, and fierce the blood-hounds
watching at the gates.” “At least,” said Deirdre, “procure for me
from Caffa that I may once in a while wander without the fort and
breathe the open air upon the moor; this wall frowns on me like an
enemy holding me in his grasp and stifling me, surely I die e’er
long within these heavy walls. But on the moor, where no man comes
(if you must have it so), I’d see at least the grouse winging its
flight, and hear the plover and the peeweet call, and pluck the
heather and the yellow gorse in summer time. O nurse, dear nurse,
have pity on your child.” When Levarcam saw the misery of the
maid, she feared that Conor would upbraid her with neglect because
her cheek grew pale, and her young joy seemed gone; and so that
night she spoke to Caffa, and he said, “I think no harm could come
if we should let the maiden walk out upon the wild hillside. No
human creature, save a stray hunter following the deer, or a poor
shepherd garnering his sheep, or some strange homeless wanderer,
e’er sets his foot upon this lonesome moor. Far off are we from
any human habitation; and the maid droops, indeed. Let her go out,
but keep her well in sight; to climb the hill-top and to roam the
heather moor as spring comes on, will bring fresh colour into her
pale cheeks, and fit her for the wooing of the king.”
So from that time, Deirdre went out upon the upland moor, and
soon she knew each nook and stream and bit of forest-land for
miles around. She learned the zig-zag flight of the long-billed
snipe, she knew the otter’s marshy lair, and where the grouse and
wild-duck made their nests. She fed the timid fawn, wild, trustful
as herself, and made a dear companion of a fox that followed her as
though it were a dog; and once, while Levarcam stayed below, she
climbed the dizzy height where golden eagles had built their nest
upon the mountain’s crest, and smoothed the eaglets with her own
soft hand. And so she grew in health, and all her spirit came to
her again, and when King Conor came to visit her, he thought that
in his dreams and in the long life he had passed among the best of
Erin’s women, he had never seen or dreamed of a girl so lovely as
this blood-drop of the moor. Eagerly he began to reckon up the days
until, her fifteenth birthday being passed, he should bring her
down to Emain, and take her as his wife. But of her walks he knew
not, only Caffa and Levarcam knew.