In the centre of it, on a rich couch of beaten bronze, lay the white form of a girl. The little golden head was pressed deep into the thick deerskin cushion. On the breast, beneath the delicate white hands, joined for the supreme prayer, the fold of the embroidered coverlet was ominously still. The light of tall wax candles, grouped around the couch, fell on the chiselled beauty of a high-bred white, young face.
Around the circular, tapestry-covered walls women were seated, making lament for the passing away of so much beauty, and love, and youth. “It is low your yellow head lies to-night, oh, Etain of the golden locks, you that were wont to hold it high at the Feastings of Kings and Heroes, when poets sang the high deeds of Flann, your Lord. It is cold and still your hands are, that were wont to be stretched out for the relieving of the wants of the stranger, and the poor; for the pouring out of wine for guests; for the rewarding of learned men, and men of valour. No colder and stiller than your heart, that was once warm with the noble blood of the race of Con! Ochone! Ochone! for the cold, still heart that can never feel the warmth of the little child nestling against it.”
The “keeners” were suddenly silent—for a cry more heartrending than theirs was filling the death-chamber. It was the cry of a little motherless baby. A tall woman, dressed from head to foot in spotless white, with a white veil thrown over her long, dark hair, had entered the room, and, coming straight to where Flann knelt by the couch of his dead wife, she stooped and tried to lay in his empty arms, what she was carrying in the shelter of her white mantle.
“See, Prince Flann,” she said, “what Etain, thy wife, has left thee for thy consolation until the day comes when she may stretch out her hands to thee again—and welcome thee home for ever.”
But Flann would not lift his face. “Take it away, oh! Brigid!” he said, “and let me not look on that which has cost me the loss of my one treasure. Let the God you serve keep the child, and give me back Etain, my wife.”
There was a moment’s silence, for Brigid had the child anew in the folds of her mantle, and its cries had ceased. Then there came a deep groan, followed by a sudden, horrified cry from the women. Brigid knelt down quickly, the child in her arms, and lifted one of the hands, which Flann had flung in his passion of despair across the dead body of his wife. Heavy as lead it dropped from her grasp. It was the hand of a dead man.
She rose then, the sorrow of the world darkening her grey eyes. “Methinks the wish of Flann has been fulfilled,” she said. “Now he stands with Etain, his wife—and their little child shall be consecrate to God.”
Part II.—The Fostering of Darlugdacha.
So in the folds of Brigid’s white mantle, the little orphan maiden, Darlugdacha, found shelter; and the first home she knew was the white-washed hut of wattles and clay in the shadow of the great oak tree of the Plain of Kildare.