History as literature, and other essays

by Theodore Roosevelt

Were often a bed for me.

Put their three hard swords

Over the grave, O young man!”

For the most part, in her songs, Deirdrè dwells on the glories and beauties of the three warriors, the three dragons, the three champions of the Red Branch, the three that used to break every onrush, the three hawks, the three darlings of the women of Erin, the three heroes who were not good at homage. She sings of their splendor in the foray, of their nobleness as they returned to their home, to bring fagots for the fire, to bear in an ox or a boar for the table; sweet though the pipes and flutes and horns were in the house of the king, sweeter yet was it to hearken to the songs sung by the sons of Usnach, for “like the sound of the wave was the voice of Naisi.”

There were other Irish heroines of a more common barbarian type. Such was the famous warrior-queen, Meave, tall and beautiful, with her white face and yellow hair, terrible in her battle chariot when she drove at full speed into the press of fighting men, and “fought over the ears of the horses.” Her virtues were those of a warlike barbarian king, and she claimed the like large liberty in morals. Her husband was Ailill, the Connaught king, and, as Meave carefully explained to him in what the old Erse bards called a “bolster conversation,” their marriage was literally a partnership wherein she demanded from her husband an exact equality of treatment according to her own views and on her own terms; the three essential qualities upon which she insisted being that he should be brave, generous, and completely devoid of jealousy!

Fair-haired Queen Meave was a myth, a goddess, and her memory changed and dwindled until at last she reappeared as Queen Mab of fairyland. But among the ancient Celts her likeness was the likeness of many a historic warrior queen. The descriptions given of her by the first writers or compilers of the famous romances of the foray for the Dun Bull of Cooley almost exactly match the descriptions given by the Latin historian of the British Queen Boadicea, tall and terrible-faced, her long, yellow hair flowing to her hips, spear in hand, golden collar on neck, her brightly colored mantle fastened across her breast with a brooch.

Not only were some of Meave’s deeds of a rather startling kind, but even Emer and Deirdrè at times showed traits that to a modern reader may seem out of place, in view of what has been said of them above. But we must remember the surroundings, and think of what even the real women of history were, throughout European lands, until a far later period. In the “Heimskringla” we read of Queen Sigrid, the wisest of women, who grew tired of the small kings who came to ask her hand, a request which she did not regard them as warranted to make either by position or extent of dominion. So one day when two kings had thus come to woo her, she lodged them in a separate wooden house, with all their company, and feasted them until they were all very drunk, and fell asleep; then in the middle of the night she had her men fall on them with fire and sword, burn those who stayed within the hall and slay those who broke out. The incident is mentioned in the saga without the slightest condemnation; on the contrary, it evidently placed the queen on a higher social level than before, for, in concluding the account, the saga mentions that Sigrid said “that she would weary these small kings of coming from other lands to woo her; so she was called Sigrid Haughty thereafter.” Now, Sigrid was an historical character who lived many hundred years after the time of Emer and Deirdrè and Meave, and the simplicity with which her deed was chronicled at the time, and regarded afterward, should reconcile us to some of the feats recorded of those shadowy Erse predecessors of hers, who were separated from her by an interval of time as great as that which separates her from us.

The story of the “Feast of Bricriu of the Bitter Tongue” is one of the most interesting of the tales of the Cuchulain cycle. In all this cycle of tales, Bricriu appears as the cunning, malevolent mischief-maker, dreaded for his biting satire and his power of setting by the ears the boastful, truculent, reckless, and marvellously short-tempered heroes among whom he lived. He has points of resemblance to Thersites, to Sir Kay, of the Arthurian romances, and to Conan, of the Ossianic cycle of Celtic sagas. This story is based upon the custom of the “champion’s portion,” which at a feast was allotted to the bravest man. It was a custom which lasted far down into historic times, and was recognized in the Brehon laws, where a heavy fine was imposed upon any person who stole it from the one to whom it belonged. The story in its present form, like all of these stories, is doubtless somewhat changed from the story as it was originally recited among the pre-Christian Celts of Ireland, but it still commemorates customs of the most primitive kind, many of them akin to those of all the races of Aryan tongue in their earlier days. The queens cause their maids to heat water for the warriors’ baths when they return from war, and similarly made ready to greet their guests, as did the Homeric heroines. The feasts were Homeric feasts. The heroes boasted and sulked and fought as did the Greeks before Troy. At their feasts, when the pork and beef, the wheaten cakes and honey, had been eaten, and the beer, and sometimes the wine of Gaul, had been drunk in huge quantities, the heroes, vainglorious and quarrelsome, were always apt to fight. Thus in the three houses which together made up the palace of the high king at Emain Macha, it was necessary that the arms of the heroes should all be kept in one place, so that they could not attack one another at the feasts. These three houses of the palace were the Royal House, in which the high king himself had his bronzed and jewelled room; the Speckled House, where the swords, the shields, and the spears of the heroes were kept; and the House of the Red Branch, where not only the weapons, but the heads of the beaten enemies were stored; and it was in connection with this last grewsome house that the heroes in the train of the High King Conchubar took their name of the “Heroes of the Red Branch.”

When Bricriu gave his feast, he prepared for it by building a spacious house even handsomer than the House of the Red Branch; and it is described in great detail, as fashioned after “Tara’s Mead Hall,” and of great strength and magnificence; and it was stocked with quilts and blankets and beds and pillows, as well as with abundance of meat and drink. Then he invited the high king and all the nobles of Ulster to come to the feast. An amusing touch in the saga is the frank consternation of the heroes who were thus asked. They felt themselves helpless before the wiles of Bricriu, and at first refused outright to go, because they were sure that he would contrive to set them to fighting with one another; and they went at all only after they had taken hostages from Bricriu and had arranged that he should himself leave the feast-hall as soon as the feast was spread. But their precautions were in vain, and Bricriu had no trouble in bringing about a furious dispute among the three leading chiefs, Loigaire the Triumphant, Conall the Victorious, and Cuchulain. He promised to each the champion’s portion, on condition that each should claim it. Nor did he rest here, but produced what the saga calls “the war of words of the women of Ulster,” by persuading the three wives of the three heroes that each should tread first into the banquet-hall. Each of the ladies, in whose minds he thus raised visions of social precedence, had walked away from the palace with half a hundred women in her train, when they all three met. The saga describes how they started to return to the hall together, walking evenly, gracefully, and easily at first, and then with quicker steps, until, when they got near the house, they raised their robes “to the round of the leg” and ran at full speed. When they got to the hall the doors were shut, and, as they stood outside, each wife chanted her own perfections, but, above all, the valor and ferocious prowess of her husband, scolding one another as did Brunhild and Krimhild in the quarrel that led to Siegfried’s death at the hands of Hagen. Each husband, as in duty bound, helped his wife into the hall, and the bickering which had already taken place about the champion’s portion was renewed. At last it was settled that the three rivals should drive in their chariots to the home of Ailill and Meave, who should adjudge between them; and the judgment given, after testing their prowess in many ways, and especially in encounters with demons and goblins, was finally in favor of Cuchulain.

One of the striking parts of the tale is that in which the three champions, following one another, arrive at the palace of Meave. The daughter of Meave goes to the sun-parlor over the high porch of the hold, and from there she is told by the queen to describe in turn each chariot and the color of the horses and how the hero looks and how the chariot courses. The girl obeys, and describes in detail each chariot as it comes up, and the queen in each case recognizes the champion from the description and speaks words of savage praise of each in turn. Loigaire, a fair man, driving two fiery dapple-grays, in a wickerwork chariot with silver-mounted yoke, is chanted by the queen as: