With that they laid their heads upon the block. A flash of the steel, and Alba was bereft of the fairest and noblest of her sons. And the air was rent with cries of lamentation.
Then did a great champion ride across the plain, and to him did Deirdre tell of the fate of the sons of Usna. And under his care the star-eyed maiden came where the heroes lay dead.
And Deirdre kneeled, and she bent low over the head of Nathos, and kissed his dead lips.
Then, at the bidding of the champion, three graves were digged, and in them, standing upright, were buried Nathos and Ailne and Ardan, and upon the shoulders of each was his head placed.
And as Deirdre gazed into the grave of Nathos, she moaned a lay which told of the brave deeds of the sons of Usna. It told, too, of her love for Nathos, and as she ended the mournful strain, her heartstrings broke, and she fell at the feet of her husband, and there did she die, and by his side was she buried.
In that same hour died the Wise Man; and as he died, he cried aloud, ‘That which shall come, shall come.’
And so it was, for on the morrow Concobar’s host was scattered as autumn leaves, and the House of the Red Branch perished, and ere long Concobar died in a madness of despair, and throughout the Green Isle was mourning and desolation.
But through the ages has the tale of the wondrous beauty of Deirdre been sung, and yet shall it be told again, for when shall the world tire of the sorrowfullest of ‘The Three Sorrows of Story-telling,’—the Fate of the Sons of Usna and of Deirdre the Star-eyed?