A Literary History of Ireland, from Earliest Times to the Present Day

by Douglas Hyde

She ceased to sing, the vessel approached the shore, and the fugitives are landed once more in Erin. But dangers thicken round them. Through a strategy of King Conor's Fergus is placed under geasa or tabu by a man called Barach to stay and partake of a feast with him, and thus detached from the sons of Usnach, who are left alone with his two sons instead. Then Déirdre again uses all her influence with her husband and his brothers to sail to Rathlin and wait there until they can be rejoined by Fergus, but she does not prevail. After that she has a terrifying dream, and tells it to them, but Naoise answered lightly in verse—

"Thy mouth pronounceth not but evil,
O maiden, beautiful, incomparable;
The venom of thy delicate ruby mouth
Fall on the hateful furious foreigners."

Thereafter, as they advanced farther upon their way towards King Conor's palace at Emania, the omens of evil grow thicker still, and all Déirdre's terrors are re-awakened by the rising of a blood-red cloud.

"'O Naoise, view the cloud
That I see here on the sky,
I see over Emania green
A chilling cloud of blood-tinged red.
I have caught alarm from the cloud
I see here in the sky,
It is like a gore-clot of blood,
The cloud terrific very-thin.'"

And she urged them to turn aside to Cuchulain's palace at Dundalgan, and remain under that hero's safeguard till Fergus could rejoin them. But she cannot persuade the others that the treachery which she herself sees so clearly is really intended. Her last despairing attempt is made as they come in sight of the royal city; she tells them that if, when they arrive, they are admitted into the mansion in which King Conor is feasting with the nobles of Ulster round him, they are safe, but if they are on any pretext quartered by the King in the House of the Red Branch, they may be certain of treachery. They are sent to the House of the Red Branch, and not admitted among the King's revellers, on the pretended grounds that the Red Branch is better prepared for strangers, and that its larder and its cellar are better provided with food and drink than the King's mansion. All now begin to feel that the net is closing over them. Late in the night King Conor, fired with drink and jealousy, called for some one to go for him and bring him word how Déirdre looked, "for if her own form live upon her, there is not in the world a woman more beautiful than she." Lavarcam, the nurse, undertakes to go. She, of course, discloses to Déirdre and Naoise the treachery that is being plotted against them, and returning to Conor she tells him that Déirdre has wholly lost her beauty, whereat, "much of his jealousy abated, and he continued to indulge in feasting and enjoyment a long while, until he thought of Déirdre a second time." This time he does not trust Lavarcam, but sends one of his retainers, first reminding him that his father and his three brothers had been slain by Naoise. But in the mean time the entrances and windows of the Red Branch had been shut and barred and the doors barricaded by the sons of Usnach. One small window, however, had been left open at the back and the spy climbed upon a ladder and looked through it and saw Naoise and Déirdre sitting together and playing at chess. Déirdre called Naoise's attention to the face looking at them, and Naoise, who was lifting a chessman off the board, hurled it at the head and broke the eye that looked at them. The man ran back and told the King that it was worth losing an eye to have beheld a woman so lovely. Then Conor, fired with fury and jealousy, led his troops to the assault, and all night long there is fighting and shouting round the Red Branch House, and Naoise's brothers, helped by the two sons of Fergus, pass the night in repelling attack, and in quenching the fires that break out all round the house. At length one of Fergus's sons is slain and the other is bought off by a bribe of land and a promise of power from King Conor, and now the morning begins to dawn, but the sons of Usnach are still living, and Déirdre is still untaken. At last Conor's druid, Cathba, consents to work a spell against them if Conor will plight his faithful word that having once taken Déirdre he will not touch or harm the sons of Usnach. Conor plights his word and troth, and the spell is set at work. The sons of Usnach had left the half-burnt house and were escaping in the morning light with Déirdre between them when they met, as they thought, a sea of thick viscid waves, and they cast down their weapons and spread abroad their arms and tried to swim, and Conor's soldiers came and took them without a blow. They were brought to Conor and he caused them to be at once beheaded. It was then the druid cursed Emania, for Conor had broken his plighted word, and that curse was fulfilled in the misery that fell upon the province during the wars with Mève. He cursed also the house of Conor, and prophesied that none of his descendants should possess Emania for ever, "and that," adds the saga, "has been verified, for neither Conor nor any of his race possessed Emania from that time to this."[6]

As for Déirdre, she was as one distracted; she fell upon the ground and drank their blood, she tore her hair and rent her dishevelled tresses, and the lament she broke forth into has long been a favourite of Irish scribes. She calls aloud upon the dead, "the three falcons of the mount of Culan, the three lions of wood of the cave, the three sons of the breast of the Ultonians, the three props of the battalion of Chuailgne, the three dragons of the fort of Monadh."

"The High King of Ulster, my first husband,
I forsook him for the love of Naoise.
* * * * *
That I shall live after Naoise
Let no man on earth imagine.
* * * * *
Their three shields and their three spears
Have often been my bed.
* * * * *
I never was one day alone
Until the day of the making of the grave,
Although both I and ye
Were often in solitude.
My sight has gone from me
At seeing the grave of Naoise."

She remembers now in her own agony another woman who would lament with her could she but know that Naoise had died.

"On a day that the nobles of Alba [Scotland] were feasting,
And the sons of Usnach, deserving of love,
To the daughter of the lord of Duntrone
Naoise gave a secret kiss.
He sent to her a frisking doe,
A deer of the forest with a fawn at its foot,
And he went aside to her on a visit
While returning from the host of Inverness.
But when I heard that
My head filled full of jealousy,
I launched my little skiff upon the waves,
I did not care whether I died or lived.
They followed me, swimming,
Ainnlé and Ardan, who never uttered falsehood,
And they turned me in to land again,
Two who would subdue a hundred.
Naoise pledged me his word of truth,
And he swore in presence of his weapons three times,
That he would never cloud my countenance again
Till he should go from me to the army of the dead.
Alas! if she were to hear this night
That Naoise was under cover in the clay,
She would weep most certainly,
And I, I would weep with her sevenfold."[7]