SOME GAELIC LOVE-STORIES
The heroic age of Ireland was not, however, the mere orgy of battle
which one might assume from the previous chapter. It had room for its
Helen and its Andromache as well as for its Achilles and its Hector. Its
champions could find time to make love as well as war. More than this,
the legends of their courtships often have a romantic beauty found in no
other early literature. The women have free scope of choice, and claim
the respect of their wooers. Indeed, it has been pointed out that the
mythical stories of the Celts must have created the chivalrous romances
of mediæval Europe. In them, and in no other previous literature, do we
find such knightly treatment of an enemy as we see in the story of
Cuchulainn and Ferdiad, or such poetic delicacy towards a woman as is
displayed in the wooing of Emer.[216] The talk between man and maid when
Cuchulainn comes in his chariot to pay his suit to Emer at Forgall’s
_dún_ might, save for its strangeness, almost have come out of some
quite modern romance.
“Emer lifted up her lovely face and recognised Cuchulainn, and she said,
‘May God make smooth the path before you!’
“‘And you,’ he said, ‘may you be safe from every harm.’”
She asks him whence he has come, and he tells her. Then he questions her
about herself.
“I am a Tara of women,” she replies, “the whitest of maidens, one who is
gazed at but who gazes not back, a rush too far to be reached, an
untrodden way.... I was brought up in ancient virtues, in lawful
behaviour, in the keeping of chastity, in rank equal to a queen, in
stateliness of form, so that to me is attributed every noble grace among
the hosts of Erin’s women.” In more boastful strain Cuchulainn tells of
his own birth and deeds. Not like the son of a peasant had he been
reared at Conchobar’s court, but among heroes and champions, jesters and
druids. When he is weakest his strength is that of twenty; alone he will
fight against forty; a hundred men would feel safe under his protection.
One can imagine Emer’s smile as she listens to these braggings. “Truly,”
she says, “they are goodly feats for a tender boy, but they are not yet
those of chariot-chiefs.” Very modern, too, is the way in which she
coyly reminds her wooer that she has an elder sister as yet unwed. But,
when at last he drives her to the point, she answers him with gentle,
but proud decision. Not by words, but by deeds is she to be won. The man
she will marry must have his name mentioned wherever the exploits of
heroes are spoken of.
“Even as thou hast commanded, so shall all by me be done,” said
Cuchulainn.
“And by me your offer is accepted, it is taken, it is granted,” replied
Emer.
It seems a pity that, after so fine a wooing, Cuchulainn could not have
kept faithful to the bride he won. Yet such is not the way of heroes
whom goddesses as well as mortal women conspire to tempt from their
loyalty. Fand, the wife of Manannán son of Lêr, deserted by the sea-god,
sent her sister Liban to Cuchulainn as an ambassador of love. At first
he refused to visit her, but ordered Laeg, his charioteer, to go with
Liban to the “Happy Plain” to spy out the land. Laeg returned
enraptured. “If all Ireland were mine,” he assured his master, “with
supreme rule over its fair inhabitants, I would give it up without
regret to go and live in the place that I have seen.”
So Cuchulainn himself went and stayed a month in the Celtic Paradise
with Fand, the fairest woman of the Sídhe. Returning to the land of
mortals, he made a tryst with the goddess to meet him again in his own
country by the yew-tree at the head of Baile’s strand.
But Emer came to hear of it, and went to the meeting-place herself, with
fifty of her maidens, each armed with a knife to kill her rival. There
she found Cuchulainn, Laeg, and Fand.
“What has led you, Cuchulainn,” said Emer, “to shame me before the women
of Erin and all honourable people? I came under your shelter, trusting
in your faithfulness, and now you seek a cause of quarrel with me.”
But Cuchulainn, hero-like, could not understand why his wife should not
be content to take her turn with this other woman—surely no unworthy
rival, for she was beautiful, and came of the lofty race of gods. We see
Emer yield at last, with queenly pathos.
“I will not refuse this woman to you, if you long for her,” she said,
“for I know that everything that is new seems fair, and everything that
is common seems bitter, and everything we have not seems desirable to
us, and everything we have we think little of. And yet, Cuchulainn, I
was once pleasing to you, and I would wish to be so again.”
Her grief touched him. “By my word,” he said, “you are pleasing to me,
and will be as long as I live.”
“Then let me be given up,” said Fand. “It is better that I should be,”
replied Emer. “No,” said Fand; “it is I who must be given up in the end.
“It is I who will go, though I go with great sorrow. I would rather stay
with Cuchulainn than live in the sunny home of the gods.
“O Emer, he is yours, and you are worthy of him! What my hand cannot
have, my heart may yet wish well to.
“A sorrowful thing it is to love without return. Better to renounce than
not to receive a love equal to one’s own.
“It was not well of you, O fair-haired Emer, to come to kill Fand in her
misery.”
It was while the goddess and the human woman were contending with one
another in self-sacrifice that Manannán, Son of the Sea, heard of Fand’s
trouble, and was sorry that he had forsaken her. So he came, invisible
to all but her alone. He asked her pardon, and she herself could not
forget that she had once been happy with the “horseman of the crested
waves”, and still might be happy with him again. The god asked her to
make her choice between them, and, when she went to him, he shook his
mantle between her and Cuchulainn. It was one of the magic properties of
Manannán’s mantle that those between whom it was shaken could never meet
again. Then Fand returned with her divine husband to the country of the
immortals; and the druids of Emain Macha gave Cuchulainn and Emer each a
drink of oblivion, so that Cuchulainn forgot his love and Emer her
jealousy.[217]
The scene of this story takes its name from another, and hardly less
beautiful love-tale. The “yew-tree at the head of Baile’s strand” had
grown out of the grave of Baile of the Honeyed Speech, and it bore the
appearance of Baile’s love, Ailinn. This Gaelic Romeo and Juliet were of
royal birth: Baile was heir to Ulster, and Ailinn was daughter of the
King of Leinster’s son. Not by any feud of Montague and Capulet were
they parted, however, but by the craft of a ghostly enemy. They had
appointed to meet one another at Dundealgan, and Baile, who arrived
there first, was greeted by a stranger. “What news do you bring?” asked
Baile. “None,” replied the stranger, “except that Ailinn of Leinster was
setting out to meet her lover, but the men of Leinster kept her back,
and her heart broke then and there from grief.” When Baile heard this,
his own heart broke, and he fell dead on the strand, while the messenger
went on the wings of the wind to the home of Ailinn, who had not yet
started. “Whence come you?” she asked him. “From Ulster, by the shore of
Dundealgan, where I saw men raising a stone over one who had just died,
and on the stone I read the name of Baile. He had come to meet some
woman he was in love with, but it was destined that they should never
see one another again in life.” At this news Ailinn, too, fell dead, and
was buried; and we are told that an apple-tree grew out of her grave,
the apples of which bore the likeness of the face of Baile, while a
yew-tree sprung from Baile’s grave, and took the appearance of Ailinn.
This legend, which is probably a part of the common heritage of the
Aryans, is found in folk-lore over an area which stretches from Ireland
to India. The Gaelic version has, however, an ending unknown to the
others. The two trees, it relates, were cut down, and made into wands
upon which the poets of Ulster and of Leinster cut the songs of the
love-tragedies of their two provinces, in _ogam_. But even these mute
memorials of Baile and Ailinn were destined not to be divided. After two
hundred years, Art the “Lonely”, High-King of Ireland, ordered them to
be brought to the hall of Tara, and, as soon as the wands found
themselves under the same roof, they all sprang together, and no force
or skill could part them again. So the king commanded them to be “kept,
like any other jewel, in the treasury of Tara.”[218]
Neither of these stories, however, has as yet attained the fame of one
now to be retold.[219] To many, no doubt, Gaelic romance is summed up in
the one word Deirdre. It is the legend of this Gaelic Helen that the
poets of the modern Celtic school most love to elaborate, while old men
still tell it round the peat-fires of Ireland and the Highlands. Scholar
and peasant alike combine to preserve a tradition no one knows how many
hundred years old, for it was written down in the twelfth-century Book
of Leinster as one of the “prime stories” which every bard was bound to
be able to recite. It takes rank with the “Fate of the Sons of Tuirenn”,
and with the “Fate of the Children of Lêr”, as one of the “Three
Sorrowful Stories of Erin”.
So favourite a tale has naturally been much altered and added to in its
passage down the generations. But its essential story is as follows:—
King Conchobar of Ulster was holding festival in the house of one of his
bards, called Fedlimid, when Fedlimid’s wife gave birth to a daughter,
concerning whom Cathbad the Druid uttered a prophecy. He foretold that
the new-born child would grow up to be the most lovely woman the world
had ever seen, but that her beauty would bring death to many heroes, and
much peril and sorrow to Ulster. On hearing this, the Red Branch
warriors demanded that she should be killed, but Conchobar refused, and
gave the infant to a trusted serving-woman, to be hidden in a secret
place in the solitude of the mountains, until she was of an age to be
his own wife.
So Deirdre (as Cathbad named her) was taken away to a hut so remote from
the paths of men that none knew of it save Conchobar. Here she was
brought up by a nurse, a fosterer, and a teacher, and saw no other
living creatures save the beasts and birds of the hills. Nevertheless,
woman-like, she aspired to be loved.
One day, her fosterer was killing a calf for their food, and its blood
ran out upon the snowy ground, which brought a black raven swooping to
the spot. “If there were a man,” said Deirdre, “who had hair of the
blackness of that raven, skin of the whiteness of the snow, and cheeks
as red as the calf’s blood, that is the man whom I would wish to marry
me.”
“Indeed there is such a man,” replied her teacher thoughtlessly.
“Naoise[220], one of the sons of Usnach[221], heroes of the same race as
Conchobar the King.”
The curious Deirdre prevailed upon her teacher to bring Naoise to speak
with her. When they met she made good use of her time, for she offered
Naoise her love, and begged him to take her away from King Conchobar.
Naoise, bewitched by her beauty, consented. Accompanied by his two
brothers, Ardan and Ainle, and their followers, he fled with Deirdre to
Alba, where they made alliance with one of its kings, and wandered over
the land, living by following the deer, and by helping the king in his
battles.
The revengeful Conchobar bided his time. One day, as the heroes of the
Red Branch feasted together at Emain Macha, he asked them if they had
ever heard of a nobler company than their own. They replied that the
world could not hold such another. “Yet”, said the king, “we lack our
full tale. The three sons of Usnach could defend the province of Ulster
against any other province of Ireland by themselves, and it is a pity
that they should still be exiles, for the sake of any woman in the
world. Gladly would I welcome them back!”
“We ourselves,” replied the Ultonians, “would have counselled this long
ago had we dared, O King!”
“Then I will send one of my three best champions to fetch them,” said
Conchobar. “Either Conall the Victorious, or Cuchulainn, the son of
Sualtam, or Fergus, the son of Roy; and I will find out which of those
three loves me best.”
First he called Conall to him secretly.
“What would you do, O Conall,” he asked, “if you were sent to fetch the
sons of Usnach, and they were killed here, in spite of your
safe-conduct?”
“There is not a man in Ulster,” answered Conall, “who had hand in it
that would escape his own death from me.”
“I see that I am not dearest of all men to you,” replied Conchobar, and,
dismissing Conall, he called Cuchulainn, and put the same question to
him.
“By my sworn word,” replied Cuchulainn, “if such a thing happened with
your consent, no bribe or blood-fine would I accept in lieu of your own
head, O Conchobar.”
“Truly,” said the king, “it is not you I will send.”
The king then asked Fergus, and he replied that, if the sons of Usnach
were slain while under his protection, he would revenge the deed upon
anyone who was party to it, save only the king himself.
“Then it is you who shall go,” said Conchobar. “Set forth to-morrow, and
rest not by the way, and when you put foot again in Ireland at the _Dún_
of Borrach, whatever may happen to you yourself, send the sons of Usnach
forward without delay.”
The next morning, Fergus, with his two sons, Illann the Fair and Buinne
the Ruthless Red, set out for Alba in their galley, and reached Loch
Etive, by whose shores the sons of Usnach were then living. Naoise,
Ainle, and Ardan were sitting at chess when they heard Fergus’s shout.
“That is the cry of a man of Erin,” said Naoise.
“Nay,” replied Deirdre, who had forebodings of trouble. “Do not heed it;
it is only the shout of a man of Alba.” But the sons of Usnach knew
better, and sent Ardan down to the sea-shore, where he found Fergus and
his sons, and gave them greeting, and heard their message, and brought
them back with him.
That night Fergus persuaded the sons of Usnach to return with him to
Emain Macha. Deirdre, with her “second sight”, implored them to remain
in Alba. But the exiles were weary for the sight of their own country,
and did not share their companion’s fears. As they put out to sea,
Deirdre uttered her beautiful “Farewell to Alba”, that land she was
never to behold again.
“A lovable land is yon eastern land,
Alba, with its marvels.
I would not have come hither out of it,
Had I not come with Naoise.
“Lovable are Dún-fidga and Dún-finn,
Lovable the fortress over them;
Dear to the heart Inis Draigende,
And very dear is Dún Suibni.
“Caill Cuan!
Unto which Ainle would wend, alas!
Short the time seemed to me,
With Naoise in the region of Alba.
“Glenn Láid!
Often I slept there under the cliff;
Fish and venison and the fat of the badger
Was my portion in Glenn Láid.
“Glenn Masáin!
Its garlic was tall, its branches white;
We slept a rocking sleep,
Over the grassy estuary of Masáin.
“Glenn Etive!
Where my first house I raised;
Beauteous its wood:—upon rising
A cattle-fold for the sun was Glenn Etive.
* * * * * * * * * *
“Glenn Dá-Rúad!
My love to every man who hath it as an heritage!
Sweet the cuckoos’ note on bending bough,
On the peak over Glenn Dá-Rúad.
“Beloved is Draigen,
Dear the white sand beneath its waves;
I would not have come from it, from the East,
Had I not come with my beloved.”
They crossed the sea, and arrived at the _Dún_ of Borrach, who bade them
welcome to Ireland. Now King Conchobar had sent Borrach a secret
command, that he should offer a feast to Fergus on his landing. Strange
taboos called _geasa_ are laid upon the various heroes of ancient
Ireland in the stories; there are certain things that each one of them
may not do without forfeiting life or honour; and it was a _geis_ upon
Fergus to refuse a feast.
Fergus, we are told, “reddened with anger from crown to sole” at the
invitation. Yet he could not avoid the feast. He asked Naoise what he
should do, and Deirdre broke in with: “Do what is asked of you if you
prefer to forsake the sons of Usnach for a feast. Yet forsaking them is
a good price to pay for it.”
Fergus, however, perceived a possible compromise. Though he himself
could not refuse to stop to partake of Borrach’s hospitality, he could
send Deirdre and the sons of Usnach on to Emain Macha at once, under the
safeguard of his two sons, Illann the Fair and Buinne the Ruthless Red.
So this was done, albeit to the annoyance of the sons of Usnach and the
terror of Deirdre. Visions came to the sorrowful woman; she saw the
three sons of Usnach and Illann, the son of Fergus, without their heads;
she saw a cloud of blood always hanging over them. She begged them to
wait in some safe place until Fergus had finished the feast. But Naoise,
Ainle, and Ardan laughed at her fears. They arrived at Emain Macha, and
Conchobar ordered the “Red Branch” palace to be placed at their
disposal.
In the evening Conchobar called Levarcham, Deirdre’s old teacher, to
him. “Go”, he said, “to the ‘Red Branch’, and see Deirdre, and bring me
back news of her appearance, whether she still keeps her former beauty,
or whether it has left her.”
So Levarcham came to the “Red Branch”, and kissed Deirdre and the three
sons of Usnach, and warned them that Conchobar was preparing treachery.
Then she went back to the king, and reported to him that Deirdre’s hard
life upon the mountains of Alba had ruined her form and face, so that
she was no longer worthy of his regard.
At this, Conchobar’s jealousy was partly allayed, and he began to doubt
whether it would be wise to attack the sons of Usnach. But later on,
when he had drunk well of wine, he sent a second messenger to see if
what Levarcham had reported about Deirdre was truth.
The messenger, this time a man, went and looked in through a window.
Deirdre saw him and pointed him out to Naoise, who flung a chessman at
the peering face, and put out one of its eyes. But the man went back to
Conchobar, and told him that, though one of his eyes had been struck
out, he would gladly have stayed looking with the other, so great was
Deirdre’s loveliness.
Then Conchobar, in his wrath, ordered the men of Ulster to set fire to
the Red Branch House and slay all within it except Deirdre. They flung
fire-brands upon it, but Buinne the Ruthless Red came out and quenched
them, and drove the assailants back with slaughter. But Conchobar called
to him to parley, and offered him a “hundred” of land and his friendship
to desert the sons of Usnach. Buinne was tempted, and fell; but the land
given him turned barren that very night in indignation at being owned by
such a traitor.
The other of Fergus’s sons was of different make. He charged out, torch
in hand, and cut down the Ultonians, so that they hesitated to come near
the house again. Conchobar dared not offer him a bribe. But he armed his
own son, Fiacha, with his own magic weapons, including his shield, the
“Moaner”, which roared when its owner was in danger, and sent him to
fight Illann.
The duel was a fierce one, and Illann got the better of Fiacha, so that
the son of Conchobar had to crouch down beneath his shield, which roared
for help. Conall the Victorious heard the roar from far off, and thought
that his king must be in peril. He came to the place, and, without
asking questions, thrust his spear “Blue-green” through Illann. The
dying son of Fergus explained the situation to Conall, who, by way of
making some amends, at once killed Fiacha as well.
After this, the sons of Usnach held their fort till dawn against all
Conchobar’s host. But, with day, they saw that they must either escape
or resign themselves to perish. Putting Deirdre in their centre,
protected by their shields, they opened the door suddenly and fled out.
They would have broken through and escaped, had not Conchobar asked
Cathbad the Druid to put a spell upon them, promising to spare their
lives. So Cathbad raised the illusion of a stormy sea before and all
around the sons of Usnach. Naoise lifted Deirdre upon his shoulder, but
the magic waves rose higher, until they were all obliged to fling away
their weapons and swim.
Then was seen the strange sight of men swimming upon dry land. And,
before the glamour passed away, the sons of Usnach were seized from
behind, and brought to Conchobar.
In spite of his promise to the druid, the king condemned them to death.
None of the men of Ulster would, however, deal the blow. In the end, a
foreigner from Norway, whose father Naoise had slain, offered to behead
them. Each of the brothers begged to die first, that he might not
witness the deaths of the others. But Naoise ended this noble rivalry by
lending their executioner the sword called “The Retaliator”, which had
been given him by Manannán son of Lêr. They knelt down side by side, and
one blow of the sword of the god shore off all their heads.
As for Deirdre, there are varying stories of her death, but most of them
agree that she did not survive the sons of Usnach many hours. But,
before she died, she made an elegy over them. That it is of a singular
pathos and beauty the few verses which there is space to give will
show.[222]
“Long the day without Usnach’s children!
It was not mournful to be in their company!
Sons of a king by whom sojourners were entertained,
Three lions from the Hill of the Cave.
* * * * * * * * * *
“Three darlings of the women of Britain,
Three hawks of Slieve Gullion,
Sons of a king whom valour served,
To whom soldiers used to give homage!
* * * * * * * * * *
“That I should remain after Naoise
Let no one in the world suppose:
After Ardan and Ainle
My time would not be long.
“Ulster’s over-king, my first husband,
I forsook for Naoise’s love.
Short my life after them:
I will perform their funeral game.
“After them I shall not be alive—
Three that would go into every conflict,
Three who liked to endure hardships,
Three heroes who refused not combats.
* * * * * * * * * *
“O man, that diggest the tomb
And puttest my darling from me,
Make not the grave too narrow:
I shall be beside the noble ones.”
It was a poor triumph for Conchobar. Deirdre in all her beauty had
escaped him by death. His own chief followers never forgave it. Fergus,
when he returned from Borrach’s feast, and found out what had been done,
gathered his own people, slew Conchobar’s son and many of his warriors,
and fled to Ulster’s bitterest enemies, Ailill and Medb of Connaught.
And Cathbad the Druid cursed both king and kingdom, praying that none of
Conchobar’s race might ever reign in Emain Macha again.
So it came to pass. The capital of Ulster was only kept from ruin by
Cuchulainn’s prowess. When he perished, it also fell, and soon became
what it is now—a grassy hill.
-----
Footnote 216:
The romance of the _Wooing of Emer_, a fragment of which is contained
in the Book of the Dun Cow, has been translated by Dr. Kuno Meyer, and
published by him in the _Archæological Review_, Vol. I, 1888. Miss
Hull has included this translation in her _Cuchullin Saga_. Another
version of it from a Bodleian MS., translated by the same scholar,
will be found in the _Revue Celtique_, Vol. XI.
Footnote 217:
This story, known as the _Sick-Bed of Cuchulainn_, translated into
French by M. d’Arbois de Jubainville, will be found in his _L’Épopée
Celtique en Irlande_, the fifth volume of _Cour de Littérature
Celtique_. Another translation, into English, by Eugene O’Curry is in
_Atlantis_, Vols. I and II.
Footnote 218:
For the full story of Baile and Ailinn see Dr. Kuno Meyer’s
translation in Vol. XIII of the _Revue Celtique_.
Footnote 219:
There are not only numerous translations of this romance, but also
many Gaelic versions. The oldest of the latter is in the Book of
Leinster, while the fullest are in two MSS. in the Advocates’ Library
at Edinburgh. The version followed here is from one of these, the
so-called Glenn Masáin MS., translated by Dr. Whitley Stokes, and
contained in Miss Hull’s _Cuchullin Saga_.
Footnote 220:
Pronounced _Naisi_.
Footnote 221:
Pronounced _Usna_.
Footnote 222:
It will be found in full in Miss Hull’s _Cuchullin Saga_. The version
there given was first translated into French by M. Ponsinet from the
Book of Leinster.
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