[12] "Is mé an barc o thuinn go tuinn,
Is mé an long iar ndul d'á stiúr.
Is mé an t-ubhall i mbárr an chroinn
Is beag do shaoil a thuitim."
See Miss Brooke's "Reliques of Ancient Irish Poetry," 2nd ed. p. 393. See also Kuno Meyer's note at p. xv of his edition of Cath Finntragha, in which he bears further evidence to the antiquity and persistence of this story.
[13] See the Book of Leinster, 107-111, a MS. copied about the year 1150.
[14] Thus translated by my late lamented friend and accomplished scholar Father James Keegan of St. Louis.
[CHAPTER XXV]
DÉIRDRE
One of the key-stone stories of the Red Branch Cycle is Déirdre, or the Fate of the Children of Usnach. Cuchulain, though he appears in this saga, is not a prominent figure in it. This piece is perhaps the finest, most pathetic, and best-conceived of any in the whole range of our literature. But like much of that literature it exists in the most various recensions, and there are different accounts given of the death of all the principal characters.
This saga commences with the birth of Déirdre. King Conor and his Ultonians had gone to drink and feast in the house of Felim, Conor's chief story-teller, and during their stay there Felim's wife gives birth to a daughter. Cathba the Druid prophesies concerning the infant, and foretells that much woe and great calamities shall yet come upon Ulster because of her. He names her Déirdre.[1] The Ultonians are smitten with horror at his prophecies, and order her to be instantly put to death. The most ancient text, that of the twelfth-century Book of Leinster, tells the beginning of this saga exceedingly tersely.