CHAPTER XIII
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.”