Once on a time Conachúr mac Nessa[1] was on a journey, and had to pass the night at the house of Felimid mac Dall, his storyteller. He was annoyed because his wife, Maeve, had not come with him, but Maeve had the knack of annoying him more than any one else was able to; so that when he thought of her his mind went intriguing and adventuring, for he was always trying to get the better of her, and was seldom without the feeling that she was getting or had just got the best of him.

For this reason he was irritable and could not look at any one with benevolence except Fergus mac Roy. But he could not look otherwise than benevolently on Fergus.

Meantime, night was at hand, and one must sleep, and it is vexatious to sleep alone.

He clapped his hands, and said to the attendant who appeared:

“Is Felimid mac Dall married?”

“He is, master.”

“Give my compliments to Felimid,” said Conachúr, “and tell him that his wife is to sleep with me to-night.”

The attendant vanished and the king was left alone. That is, he was left to his thoughts, for when he was among those he was where other men might not care to follow him. In fact, the large room wherein he sat was almost uncomfortably filled with men: but they kept respectfully apart, playing chess, and speaking in low voices to one another.

The attendant returned.

“A Rí Uasal!” said he humbly.

“Well?” said Conachúr.

“The master of the house regrets that his wife cannot sleep with you to-night.”

“Here is something new,” said the king sternly.

“His wife is at this moment in childbed,” murmured the discreet servant.

“These women are always troublesome,” said the king with jovial anger. “She troubles me by withdrawing herself from my comfort, and she troubles my poor Felimid by giving him a child he could well do without.”

He looked moodily on his gentlemen. There was Cathfa,[2] the famous poet, and Conall his grandson, to be known later as Cearnach (the victorious), but already notable; bitter-tongued Bricriu, who was famous or infamous according to one’s judgement; Uisneac, who had married one of Cathfa’s three daughters, and for whose little son Naoise the queens of Ireland would weep so long as Ireland had a memory; and there was Fergus mac Roy.

Conachúr’s eye travelled loweringly from one to the other of these men until it rested on Fergus, and on him it rested lovingly, benevolently.

He looked loweringly on the others because they did not stand in any particular relation to him at the moment. He looked lovingly and mildly on Fergus because he hated Fergus and had wronged him so bitterly that he must wrong him yet more in justification. His wife and Fergus mac Roy were often in his thoughts, so he looked very lovingly on them and speculated a great deal about their future.

But this night the young king was seriously out of humour, not only because of his wife’s absence, but because of many things that had happened. Three comets in succession had flashed across the sky as they drove to the Story-teller’s house. His leading chariot-horse had trod in a rabbit-hole and its leg was cracked at the fetlock; and one of his attendants had been taken with mortal vomitings, and it did not seem that he would finish until he had emptied his body of his soul.

Conachúr called to his father:

“You are a poet, and should be able to tell us the meaning of these various omens.”

“It is not hard to tell,” said the calm magician.

“Then tell it,” quoth the king testily.

As he spoke a thin wail came from somewhere in the building, and the men present turned an ear to that little sound, and then a questioning or humorous eye on each other.

“You hear,” said the poet. “A child has just been born in this house. She will bring evil to Ireland, and she will work destruction in Ulster as a ferret works destruction in a rabbit’s burrow.”

Cathfa then returned to his chess, leaving the company staring.

“You have the gift of comfortable prophecy,” said the king.

“Put an end to the prophecy by putting an end to the child,” Bricriu advised, “and then let us see how the gods manage their affairs.”

“Bricriu, my soul,” said the king, “you like troubling the waters, but to-night you seem to be afflicted with sense. Bring the creature to me.”

They carried the little morsel to him and she was laid across his knees.

“So you are to destroy my kingdom and bring evil to mighty Ireland?”

The babe reached with a tiny claw and gripped one finger of the king.

“See,” he laughed, “she places herself under my protection,” and he moved his finger to and fro, but the child held fast to it.

“Ulster is under your protection,” growled Bricriu.

The king, who did not like other men’s advice, looked at him.

“It is not soldierly, nor the act of a prince to evade fate,” said he who was to be known afterwards as the wide-eyed, majestic monarch. “Therefore, all that can happen will happen, and we shall bear all that is to be borne.”

Then he gave the child back to its trembling nurse.

Cathfa looked up from the chess-board.

“She is to be called the ‘Troubler,’” said he.

And from that day “Deirdre” was her name.

[1] Conachúr = pron. Kun-a-hoor; mac = pron. mock.

[2] Cathfa = pron. Kaffa.

CHAPTER II

When Echaid Yellow-Heel was King of Ulster, he had a daughter called Assa. She was educated apart from her father’s residence by twelve tutors, and none of these had ever trained a pupil who was so docile, so teachable, or so affectionate. She loved knowledge, and so she loved learned men and would be always in their company.

One day she went on a visit to her father’s court, and when she returned to her lessons she found that her twelve tutors had been murdered, and there was nothing to tell who had killed them.

From that moment her nature changed. She put on the dress of a female warrior, gathered a company about her, and went marauding and plundering in every direction. She was no longer called Assa (the Gentle), but Nessa, or the Ungentle, was her name thenceforth.

Cathfa, the son of Ross, was then a young, powerful, and ambitious man, learning magic, or practising what he had learned, and it was he had slain the tutors, but Nessa did not know this. It may be that Cathfa had visited the tutors during her absence, and, for young magicians do not love argument, he may have killed them after a dispute.

Once, on one of her marauding expeditions, she went questing in a wilderness. At a distance there was a spring of clear water, and, while her people were preparing food, Nessa went to this spring to bathe. She was in the water when Cathfa passed, for he also was in that wilderness, and when he saw the girl’s body he loved her, for she was young and lovely. He approached, and placed himself between the girl and her dress and weapons, and he held a sword over her head.

“Spare me,” she pleaded.

“If you will be my wife I will spare you,” said Cathfa.

She agreed to that, for no other course was open to her, and they rejoined her party.

They were married, and Nessa’s father gave them a bride-gift of land, called afterwards Rath Cathfa, in the country of the Picts in Crí Ross. In time a son was born to those two, namely, Conachúr mac Nessa, for it was by his mother’s name he was known, and it was for him that Cathfa made the poem beginning:

Welcome to the stranger that has come here.

There are some who say, however, that Fachtna the Mighty had been the leman of Nessa, and that it was he was the father of Conachúr instead of Cathfa. If so, as Fachtna was the son of Maga, who was daughter of Anger mac an Og of the Brugh, then Conachúr had the blood of a god in his veins as well as the blood of a mortal, and much of his great success and of his terrible failure can be accounted for; for the gods are unlucky in love, so, too, the son of a wise mother is unlucky in love, as is also the man who is fortunate in war.

After some time Nessa left her husband, taking her son with her. It may be that she had discovered he was the murderer of her tutors. It may have been that she did not love him; it may even be that she did not like being wife to a magician, or he may have grown tired of her. But she never returned to him again.

But when Conachúr was a youth Nessa was still the most beautiful woman of Ulster. The then King of Ulster, Fachtna the Mighty, died, and his young half-brother, Fergus, the son of Roy, wife of Ross the Red, son of Rury, came to the throne. Fergus was then eighteen years of age and Conachúr was sixteen, and, like Conachúr, Fergus also was known by his mother’s name instead of his father’s.

Nessa came to the Ulster court with her son, and while there Fergus fell madly in love with her, and she could in no way avoid the importunities of that monstrous youth, for Fergus was gigantic in bulk and stature.

“I shall marry you on one condition,” said Nessa.

“I agree to it beforehand,” said Fergus.

“You know the great love I bear my son, Conachúr?”

“I also love him,” said Fergus.

“His descent is kingly,” she said, “and I desire that he should be a king if it were only for a year. If you resign the crown to him during our first year of marriage I will marry you.”

“I will do that,” said Fergus.

That was done, and for a year Fergus and Nessa lived happily together.

But Nessa was not entirely absorbed in love. She was still thinking of her son. During that year she arranged a marriage for Conachúr with Clothru, the daughter of the High King of Ireland, and she spent a vast treasure in working among the nobles and important people of Ulster, so that they became of her son’s party as against the party of her husband.

Indeed, her young husband had no party, for he was the least suspicious man living in the world, and, except in matters of honour or war, he would make no plans and take no trouble. Nor was Conachúr idle during his year of kingship. His ability was marvellous, and his energy as wonderful. Feuds that seemed to be endless were settled by him. Foreign affairs that threatened or hung offered him no trouble. But it was from the Judgement Seat that his fame spread most quickly.

“A fool,” said the proverb, “can give judgement, but who will give us justice?” No question was so tangled but that swift mind could pierce it; no matter was too ponderous to be weighed by him, or too light to escape his attention. He knew all, he attended to all; everything he touched was bettered, and men said that until that year Ulster had never known prosperity, or peace, or justice, but only the imitation of these. Conachúr was every man’s friend, and in a short time every man was his.

Fergus returned to a court that had forgotten him, or that was so blinded by the new prodigy that they saw nothing when they looked elsewhere. It was held that Fergus had actually resigned the kingship, or that he had given it as a dowry to his wife; and, although the young lord may have been dismayed, the representation of the nobles, and, in particular, the wit and cajolery of his wife, arranged that matter, so that he made no effort to regain his kingdom, and in a short time he was the most devoted admirer of Conachúr in the realm.

It is possible that Nessa left him then, or that she died, but we do not hear of her again.

Conachúr’s married life may have been happy, but it was short. At the end of about eight months Clothru returned to Connacht on a visit to the High King, her father. We do not know what happened, but a dispute arose between Clothru and her youngest sister, Maeve.[3] Maeve struck a blow that killed Clothru, and Conachúr’s first child was born in its mother’s death agonies.

When this news came to Ulster Conachúr set out to demand reparation or vengeance, but when he beheld Maeve his ideas underwent a horrible change. He had never seen anything like this queenly creature. He had not imagined that there could be in the world a girl so wonderful as she, for she was brave and able and of a marvellous loveliness. Conachúr’s hard mind would not flinch when once his lusts were aroused. His vengeance and his desire made common cause. He married Maeve against her wish, and without her consent, and he bore her back with him to Ulster, a queen, a captive, and, notwithstanding her crime, a deeply wronged woman.

Fergus mac Roy and Maeve, these were his victims, and from them there was to arise a story which would seem to the king as unending as time itself. Those two, and Deirdre!

[3] It was this Maeve, anciently spelled “Madb,” who became afterwards “Mab” the Queen of the Fairies of Spenser and Shakespeare.

CHAPTER III

Deirdre grew up in a place apart at Emania. She saw no people of any kind, except Lavarcham, the king’s “conversation-woman,” and her women servants; for always about the castle where she lived there was a guard of the oldest and ugliest swordsmen that were in Ulster. Their duty was to let nobody pass in or out of the castle grounds; for it was the king’s intention to outwit fate as he had outwitted all else that had moved in his path.

Thus she grew in gentleness and peace, hearing no voice less sweet than the voice of the birds that sang in the sunshine, or the friendly calling of the wind she played with; seeing nothing more uncomely than the gracious outline of far hills, the many-coloured sky that fled and was never gone, the creatures that lived unmolested in the trees about the castle, and the wild deer that grew tame in nearby brakes. All that she knew was friendly to her and naught was rough. All that she drew nigh to stood for her approach. Naught fled from her, and she did not flee from anything.

Watching her, as she stood or sat or went, the wise Lavarcham used to lose her senses, for all that was beautiful was here gathered into one form, as in one true ray of the sun is all that is lovely of the sun. The running wind, and the wild creatures of the wood; the folk from the Shí, the Bochanachs and Bananocks, and the aerial beings that are not seen, might have stayed to look at Deirdre, but had they stayed they could not have gone again, for they would have become eyes only, and they would have perished in beauty, gazing on it.

Lavarcham was a wise woman. She could not have occupied and continued to hold her position in Conachúr’s household had she not been wise. She was known as the king’s “conversation-woman,” and she could indicate an unpleasant truth as delicately as a poet can express the dimple in a lady’s chin. But her real occupation, masked by the courteous word, was that of household spy. She went to and fro in the vast palaces at Emania, and nothing passed there, whether among the nobles or the servants, that she was not privy to, or which the king was not thereafter acquainted with. She could adapt herself to any situation and to every society; and if her chatter with the kitchen-maids was jovial and in key, her conversation with a young princess or an old bard was not less balanced and elucidatory.

She had many things to teach a young girl, and she withheld no knowledge that could benefit the little one whom her heart had soon adopted as its own babe. The virtues as well as the arts were part of her experience, so that Deirdre grew in the love of chastity, of industry, and of joyfulness.

In this way and in these teachings the years went by, unnoticed as years. Day followed night, and night came after day in a timeless succession, each adding its unnoticeable little to her stature, its unseen tender curve to her limbs, its imperceptible deposit of memory to her mind.

But among the arts of which the tireless Lavarcham spoke there was one she taught and retaught to Deirdre, and that art was Conachúr.

Although she had never seen the king, yet the young girl knew him as a mother knows her baby. She could have recited his babyhood, his adolescence, and now his maturity. She knew, as only Lavarcham did, why he did such a certain thing, and by what progressions this stated consummation, marvelled at by others, had been arrived at. It was of infinite interest to Deirdre, but its inevitable effect was to stamp the unseen king with a seal of time, so that, although Lavarcham insisted he was only thirty-five years of age, the young girl’s mind regarded him as one who could have been father and grandfather to a hill.

She reported to Conachúr at proper intervals as to her ward, and he, if he had wished, might have checked the passing years by his memory of the stories Lavarcham told him of Deirdre learning to walk, and walking; of Deirdre learning to talk, and talking: her teeth were counted to him as she cut them, and when she bruised her knee slipping down a bank, or when she wept for the cold fledgling she found on the path, or when she refused to weep in a thunderstorm, he was acquainted with the facts, and nodded at them gravely as they were told.

She had been a round thing, all surprise and fluff, like a young duck: she became a lank anatomy, all leg and hair and stare, like a young colt: then she became a wild thing, all spring and peep and run, like a young fawn; and now she was what Lavarcham continued to report and dilate on.

But the king could not believe one half of the tale that Lavarcham told, for it seemed to him that such beauty as she reported was not credible, and he knew that women speak foolishly when they talk of beauty. He was, moreover, well satisfied with the queen who was with him then, Maeve, the lovely daughter of the High King.

CHAPTER IV

It happened at last that Maeve came to the decision which for a long time had been forming in her mind. She decided that she would not remain with the King of Ulster any longer, and, having so decided and faced all its implications, she was not long in finding an opportunity to get away from him. It is not right to say that she “found” an opportunity, for she was of those who create chance, and who do at all times everything that is in their minds.

There were many reasons why she might have been discontented as the wife of Conachúr. The similarity of their characters, their equally imperious temperaments, their equally untiring and almost identical habits of mind, rendered each an object of suspicion and endless cogitation to the other. They could not rest together or apart, for each knew what, in certain circumstances, he or she would do, and unerringly credited the other with the performance of these surmised deeds. Thus leisure, which might have been profitably spent by either, was wasted by both in courteous ambuscades and counter or parallel schemes, so that the private habit of one was a perpetual cancelling of the private desires of the other, and a state of exasperation existed between them which, as it could not come to the surface and be faced or downfaced, ended by being a very poison to life.

In settling out these terms it is more proper to refer them to Maeve than to the king, for in the large conduct of his affairs he could escape from his household and forget in the Council Hall or the Judgement Seat that which his wife was given only the greater leisure to remember in her Sunny Chamber or among her servants and sycophants.

But matrimony had been poisoned for them at the very fountain, and a dear, detestable memory for Maeve was that her husband had outraged her before he married her, and that he had taken her then and thereafter in her own despite.

If it had been a question of morality she might have forgiven Conachúr almost before forgiveness could be prayed for, but it was not a moral violence she raged against. She was a lady to whom nothing in the world was so dear and instant as she was herself, and that any man should lay an uninvited hand upon her outraged her sense of propriety as no general idea could have done. But she was as courageous as she was beautiful and as unblushing as either. The world might have heard her statement of the virtues she demanded in a husband, and if the world was alarmed the young queen permitted it to be as it pleased, on condition that it did not interfere with her, nor question her wish.

“My husband,” she said, “must be free from cowardice, and free from avarice, and free from jealousy; for I am brave in battles and combats, and it would be a discredit to my husband if I were braver than he. I am generous and a great giver of gifts, and it would be a disgrace to my husband if he were less generous than I am. And,” she continued, “it would not suit me at all if he were jealous, for I have never denied myself the man I took a fancy to, and I never shall whatever husband I have now or may have hereafter.”

It is possible that her husband did not fulfil these conditions as completely as Maeve desired. Of his courage there could be no doubt. He had proved that on many an opponent, and although there were better soldiers there were few who breasted danger with such gay violence. As to his generosity, that might be questioned by one so whole-hearted as Maeve, for although he would give often and largely there might be more of calculation than of spontaneity in the gift. But it is in the third of her stipulations that Conachúr would probably be found wanting; for, given his temperament, his furious passions, his habit of command, and his endless cleverness, he should have been a very madman for jealousy. All clever men are jealous: it is one of the forms of egoism.

He must have tracked the discontented lady with the persistence of a bloodhound and all the casual anonymity of a husband. He would have been always just there in the place where she least desired to see him; and it is possible that gentlemen on whom her eyes rested approvingly would disappear before her eyes had adequately rested on them. It may have seemed to Maeve that some one like Conachúr was standing at every corner in Emain Macha,[4] and that at the few corners where he was not his conversation-woman was, or some other withered crone was there blaring hideously on her yellow tusk and making a noise that would annoy a young woman, but which might absolutely terrify a young man.

She reviewed the situation and all the subsidiary situations. She thought of what her father, the High King, would say, and knew how he should be answered and by what arts he might be made an ally. She thought of what her two sisters would urge, but she thought of them negligently, considering that they would be more anxious to avoid than to meet her. And she thought of her third sister, about whom she need speculate no more; and Maeve’s hand that struck the blow had been as steady as was her mind that contemplated its memory. Conachúr had come to demand vengeance and had exacted marriage. That was his vengeance, and she thought of the cold-minded, furious-blooded king in every alternation from astonishment to rage, and in every mood except that of fear, for she was not afraid of him, or of anything that lived.

[4] Emain Macha = pronounced Evan Maha.

CHAPTER V

Her immediate intention was to get away from Ulster and so to order her conduct in the meantime that the king, who suspected everything and foresaw all, would have no suspicion of this: therefore, if she cogitated her plans she kept them in her own mind. She would have no confidant until the action was decided and the hour for it had struck.

And in this matter she had much to think of. But she patiently resolved these complexities, so that each went at last into its place in her plan, and she had the leisure to review and revise it until she could be certain that nothing was forgotten and that a perfect piece of machinery had been created. The machine was not visible, but it would appear as at a wave of her hand, and it would begin to move at the hour of its birth. It was not by chance that this lady was called by a masculine name,[5] for she had patience and tenacity and a clear, cool head.

Had it been merely a question of getting comfortably away there would have been nothing in the prospect to exercise the queen. She would have mounted her chariot, and, whether her husband was looking or not looking, she would have driven wherever she wished to go: she would have driven over him if he had stood in her way, and through his army if that had been unavoidable. The difficulty was that she did not intend to leave with Conachúr the possessions she had brought to Ulster and those that she had since acquired, for the High King had endowed his daughter in a manner befitting his condition and the rank she was to occupy; and, as a wife’s possessions were secured to her by the law of the land, she did not intend to leave Conachúr richer than he had a right to be.

It was the transport of this vast baggage which exercised the queen.

She owned flocks of sheep, herds of cattle, droves of horses and pigs. These naturally had multiplied during her residence at Emain. She had vessels of gold and silver, of findriny and bronze. She had rings and bracelets; shoulder torques as big as plates, and breast brooches that were twice as big. She had pleasure chariots and war chariots; she had rich fabrics of linen embroidered with gold and silver thread; many-coloured, silken shawls with deep fringes of gold or with tassels and bobberies of silver. She had head-dresses of every material and metal. Bronze spears, each with an hundred loose rings of gold that clashed musically up and down the handle, and on each of the rings there chimed a little silver bell. She had shields and breastplates of solid silver and gold, and they were set out with patterns of dainty gems. There were quilts of silk and fur, cushions that delighted the head or the eye that rested on them. She had bird-cages of ivory and crystal. Beds that had been chipped out of monster blocks of amethyst. Cups of carved ivory, each with a different gem set inside at the bottom so that it twinkled at you while you drank. Chess-boards of precious metals, and each man on the board had occupied the cunning artificer a long year of his age to fashion it. She had her own machinery for brewing and baking. What had she not got? Her dresses alone would pack a house and burst out through the roof and tumble down the glass of her Sunny Chamber like an untimely sunset for colour, and like a billow of the sea for exuberance.

She did not intend that as much as one thread of her threads should remain behind her in Emain Macha.

“No other queen shall waggle her toes in my draperies, nor enjoy what is proper for my enjoyment alone,” thought Maeve.

Conachúr was preparing to go on a visit to Cairbre Niafar, King of Leinster, for he thought an alliance could be formed from which good might possibly come to Ulster. The neighbouring kingdom of Connacht had grown strong and stronger, and he knew that the people of that kingdom would be glad to think that Leinster and he remained at arm’s-length.

He would travel in state, and such a journey had to be organized carefully. Houses for rest and entertainment on the way must be arranged for. Heralds and messengers sent days in advance and dispositions made so that their reports might be received on his journey. Several thousand men would be in his company, and the shelter, feeding, and entertainment of these had to be thought of. So for a little time he was busy. But he was not too busy to remark anything that might chance to be remarkable.

Lavarcham sat with him in his retired room at the centre of the Royal Branch. From this room the great circular mass of his palace radiated in all directions to its ten-acre circumference, and in this deep-placed, well-secured centre the king sat, as a spider might sit in the middle of his gigantic web. The room he occupied was sufficiently large. The ceiling was an intricate medley and very encrustation of carved wood, and pushing out of that chaotic centre came a great shoulder and a grotesque head which held in its mouth a bronze chain with a crystal ball swinging from it, and that ball was so round and pure it seemed to be one great drop of clear water. Sometimes Cathfa came here, and would read matters in the crystal to the king. The walls of the room were panelled in polished red oak, and between each oaken panel was a panel of ruddy bronze, with a silver rail above it, and a golden bird was perched at the end of each rail; so that the light from the torches gleamed gently again from the walls and multiplied itself in faint winks and reflections about the room. There was one large chair there, and a small stool.

Lavarcham was seated on the stool. She was permitted to rest in her master’s presence, for she usually had much to say to him and he always found her interesting.

“Good my soul,” said the king. “I am glad that you are a woman.”

“I am not badly contented about that myself,” she smiled.

“For,” he continued, “if you had been a man I should have been afraid of you.”

“How so, master?”

“Because you could have taken my kingdom whenever you wanted it.”

“Indeed, master, I would not accept a kingdom if I got one as a present. There is too much responsibility and there is too much to do.”

“It is no lie,” he conceded.

“I like,” she continued, “to do my work, and then I like to forget my work; but if I had the bad luck to be a king, or a queen, I should never again know what a rest meant, as you, my dear master, do not know what it is to rest yourself.”

“Still,” said the king smilingly, “the queen does get an occasional rest.”

“A king wants rest but cannot get it; a queen, however, may not feel the need to rest, and may not wish for it.”

“How do you intend that, my friend?”

“I mean that a woman gives herself up more than a man does, and when she so gives herself to love or power or hate she gives all that she has, where a man may keep back something.”

“But the queen, Lavarcham, as you have spoken of her, what do you think of her?”

“How would I dare to think about the queen, master?”

“Do you like her?” he insisted.

“She is very lovely.”

“I perceive that you do not love the queen,” said he; and then, after a moment, but severely—“Do you love me, Lavarcham?”

“I do love you indeed,” she answered gravely.

“But,” he insisted, “do you love anybody else as well as me?”

“I love nobody else except my babe.”

“Ah, that fabulous babe! Is she still getting new teeth, or what is it she is getting now?”

“She is getting to be a beautiful young girl, master.”

“Ah, yes, you told me that.”

“She is thirteen years of age.”

“But tell me now, my heart, why did you draw the talk a moment ago to queens and their hate and restlessness?”

“Indeed, master, I did not draw the talk round in that way.”

“Perhaps,” he mused, “the queen has not treated you courteously.”

“You are wrong indeed,” she said happily, “for this whole week past the queen has been most kind to me.”

“Ah!”

“And to-day she called me ‘her Dear Branch, Lavarcham,’ and spoke with me for an hour.”

“Ah!” said Conachúr. “Have you been among her women?”

“I have, master.”

“And her men?”

“They too.”

“What have you found?”

“Nothing, master. Not a word, not a wink, not a stare, not a hesitation, not an eagerness, not a question; I found nothing.”

“And in the queen what did you notice?”

“Affection for me, master.”

“I wish I were not going away,” said the king. He stood from his chair and strode weightily in the room.

“I too wish it,” his companion agreed.

He halted and regarded her gravely.

“Be very friendly with the queen,” he counselled.

But Lavarcham smiled pityingly at him.

“Why should I waste my time?” said she.

He nodded at that also, and became deeply and unhappily thoughtful.

[5] The word Maeve or Mab seems to mean “Intoxication.”

CHAPTER VI

Maeve had her own bodyguard of soldiers, close on one thousand men, who had come with her from Connacht, and from whom she refused to be parted. She was herself their captain, and each man of them was devoted to her. They were mostly her own countrymen, and she drilled and exercised and was good to them with untiring patience and skill. She was the mother of the force, but a wag called her the wife of the regiment. These thousand men were in Conachúr’s mind as he arranged his visit to Leinster. He had often thought he must disband this force and replace it by his own men, or that he must win its allegiance and destroy it, so he also had been especially kind to the strange soldiers.

Now, on the eve of his journey, he thought it would be a good thing to bring them with him to Leinster; thus, as he explained to Maeve, giving them entertainment and exercise, while at the same time doing honour to his queen and her native province. But the proposition raised such a dreadful ire in the queen, she trod the chamber in such dudgeon and was so free in her speech, that Conachúr hastily and good-humouredly withdrew the suggestion; and bade her bear the soldiers’ discontent when they learned who stood between them and one of the pleasantest marches that a soldier could have.

Indeed, an argument with Maeve was not to be lightly undertaken. It was likely to last a long time, in the first place; and in the second, she had so precipitate a manner of speech and so copious a command of words that the listener’s mind quickly began to feel as if it were in a whirlpool, his head would fly round and round, and he must run away lest his brains burst out from his ears and he die giddily.

No one but Conachúr could hearken to Maeve’s speech on such occasions, and he only did it when he particularly wanted to. For, at times, that which would drive another man mad had a strangely soothing effect on him, and he could sit under that shrill tornado as peacefully as a daisy sits in the sunshine. At times, as one forces a restive horse much farther than it desires to go, he would impel into the brief tail-end of her sentence a philosophic and peaceful interjection which acted on her as the spur on the horse, so that he would drive her beyond the very bounds of utterance, and she would at last, from sheer tongue-weariness, topple from the peaks of speech into a silence so profound that nothing, it seemed, could ever draw her thence again; and then Conachúr would talk to her soothingly, reasonably, unforgivably, and it was Maeve would run.

But this time Conachúr fled: he was in no mood and had not the time for argument; he knew she would not yield, and he was so angry and hurried that he could not be the patient, humorous, and watchful comrade he had intended to be.

When he spoke of this matter to Lavarcham he did not speak with good humour, but he did not empty his mind even to the conversation-woman. It was not necessary.

“When I return from Leinster ...!” said he.

But the wise woman nodded only a half-hearted agreement, for she thought that, although it might only take two days to bury a thousand men, it would take a long time to bury those who would march to avenge them.

The rage and agitation into which his suggestion had thrown the queen was so great that she fell ill, and could not accompany her husband to Leinster. So that, as on a previous occasion, he had to travel without her, the understanding being that she would take the road after him, and, travelling more lightly, could perhaps catch on his company before they reached Naas, the court and capital of the King of Leinster.

With his force, but unknown to it, there went a youth—a long-striding, active, bull-like young man with a freckled face and red hair, and than whom there was no more jovial person in all Ireland, for if a man was striking at him with a spear he could make that man laugh so much that he would not be able to hit straight. His name was mac Roth. He was Maeve’s personal servant, her herald. But just as the word “conversation-woman” cloaked another occupation for Lavarcham, so the word “herald” hid the same usefulness in mac Roth. He was Maeve’s personal spy, but he also was her herald, and in after days, because of his knowledge, address, and courage, he was to be the chief herald of all Ireland.

He accompanied Conachúr’s force, but he was not with it. He was a mile in advance, or a perch behind, or he was to the right of it just at a small distance, or he was looking from a hill on the left as the gay cavalcade and silver-shining chariots went by in the valley.

He accompanied them in that manner unseen for two days, and then, murmuring a blessing on them and on their encampment, he left them in the night, taking from them the loan of an unwatched horse, and he rode back by short cuts to Emain.

When he reached the palace he was able to report that the king had gone so far he could not easily turn back; and at that news Maeve’s illness departed from her as suddenly as it had come.

In the morning she called for twenty of the chief men of her bodyguard and gave them careful, separate instruction. Then she informed the domestics that her quarters must be thoroughly cleaned while the king was away, and that everything she owned must be put out on the sunny lawn for airing and counting.

The palace chamberlain came in great haste, but that suave man was soothed by Maeve and sent away with his dignity unhurt, but his mind exercised. He communicated his news to Lavarcham, who had retired to the company of her “babe” outside Emania. Within the hour Lavarcham despatched a flying messenger to Conachúr, but just outside the city mac Roth, who was waiting for him in a hedge, buzzed a spear through that man’s back as he went thundering past. But in the night Lavarcham, who left little to chance, sent other messengers, so that if some miscarried others would not.

But Maeve’s plan was at work, the men she had chosen for a particular part were acting in that part, and inside of ten hours her company was deployed behind her baggage, her march to Connacht had begun, and Conachúr was a bachelor again.

CHAPTER VII

It was as well that the king was in Leinster at the time of Maeve’s flight. Had he been nearer home he would have been obliged to do something, and, in such a situation, to do anything is to be ridiculous. He knew Maeve too well to imagine that she would return for a threat, yet he made the threats which seemed politic, for that was a matter of course.

But the messengers who bore these rigorous intimations to her father bore others to Maeve, and in these the son of Ness was humble as no one could imagine possible, and as his counsellors might not have deemed advisable.

There was no arrangement which she might have suggested that he would not have agreed to, but the difference between them was too radical to be spanned by arrangements.

Maeve was proud; she was vain to boot, and could not consent to be second to any one. Living with Conachúr she had to be second, whatever he or she might desire. Indeed, living with him anywhere she would have to take second place, for the first place came to him so naturally, with such ease and finality, it could not be questioned or revoked, or contrived in any way.

More, and worse, she detested him for he had always dared her and succeeded. She, it is true, had dared him, and on this occasion had succeeded. But she could not live with him and dare him competently, which is just what he could do with her. Even if he abdicated the throne to her he would keep the sceptre, and she could no more take it from him than she could have abstracted the speed from the lightning. If she came back to Emania she would come back dead, or, should it happen that she did come back alive, the king would at last have to kill her or she would kill the king. Conachúr knew it, and at last renounced his vain embassies and hopes.

If we should wonder why he sent them, or why he should hope, the answer lay in his character. That clever, energetic man could not exist with a tame mate. A mere bodily satisfaction he, sated in such satisfactions, would have exhausted in a week, and thereafter he would be without a refreshment which is as much of the mind as of the body, and which, to one of his temperament, has always most of the mind even when it seems fleshy to beastliness. She satisfied cravings of his nature which he himself but dimly understood; and if, with her, the mistress was more apparent than the wife, therein lies the desire and doom of a clever man.

For he was diabolically clever, and, so, not wise, and, so, not great. Only the great escape slavery, and he was the slave to his ego and would be whipped. A great man would not, because he could not, take mean advantages. But the manner in which Conachúr ousted Fergus from his throne will command the admiration of his peers only, and obtain from them the justification which success requires. And yet he could retain the love of his victim, the trust of his people. He was so near to greatness; there were such sterling qualities running with the egotism; he could be so mild in difficulties, so clear-sighted in counsel; he could be so staunch a friend; he could forgive with such royal liberality; he could spend himself so endlessly for his realm. Cúchulain did not think of him as a bad man, nor did Fergus; and as to the latter, he loved and honoured Conachúr above the men of Ireland. Was that a defect or a merit in Fergus? Was he too great or too simple? But it was not for clever tricks he admired Conachúr, nor was it for tricks that his people referred to him as the “wide-eyed, majestic king.”

However he bore the flight in public, he mourned for and craved for Maeve in private, and the illness which comes to a baulked will fell on him, corroding his mind and his temper, so that even Lavarcham left him as much alone as her duties permitted.

Again and again by an effort of the will he would arouse from that sour brooding to throw himself into work and into the grave joviality which had once been his note; but, as instantly, he would relapse visibly to any eye, and might stare so sardonically and uncomprehendingly on a suppliant that the latter would be glad to go away with his tale unlistened to.

Matters were thus when a new plan began to brood in Lavarcham’s mind, so that when she looked on her babe again it began to seem that she looked on a queen, for she intended to marry Deirdre to Conachúr.

All Ulster wished the king to marry again, for a celibate prince is a scandal to the people.

It was the constant effort of those responsible in the State to marry off a young prince almost as soon as he came to the age of puberty. For such youngsters are great rovers, with appetites as gluttonous as dogs, and so care-free that they are surprised and indignant if others question the action which they do not themselves weigh. It is certainly a hardship and a tyranny if a neighbour should constrain a neighbour’s wife to his own domestic uses, but it is only a hardship because the affair occurs between equals, among whom friendly observances are due, and between whom equal respect is grounded. Among equals anything that implies inequality is a punishable wrong: but there is no hardship when the superior takes what he carelessly desires. It is community of interests which makes equals, and the disturbance of this which makes enemies; but there is no community of interests between the prince and the subject, and no man is aggrieved by an action which can only affect his honour by increasing it. Nevertheless, so illogical is the mind of man, and so uncompromising is the sense of property, that men could be found who would interrupt with a spear the careless pleasure of a prince; and there were some, blacksmiths mostly and cobblers, who would take a cudgel to the king’s majesty itself and beat it out of a warm bed.

So, when Lavarcham thought that she might conduct her ward between the lax arms of her sovereign, she but harboured an idea which every male person in the realm who had a wife, a sister, or a daughter, hoped for with fervour.

Nor did the idea occur only to her.

Within a month of Maeve’s disappearance more young ladies began to appear in Emania than had been noticed there previously, so that Conachúr, had he been in a condition to observe such things, might have noticed that Ulster had begun to blossom like the rose.

But plottings such as these were of small use in the case of a man like Conachúr, and it is likely that the first person to know what should be done and what was expected from the head of the State was the king himself. His duty as a king would point him the way: the necessity to repair what had been damaged would claim his mind; and the desire to forget by replacing would be even more insistent; for if a hair of the dog that bit you is the specific against drunkenness, it is a medicine against love also, and is, alas! the only one we know of.

Therefore the king did for a while take a fevered interest in the ladies of his court, but he found, so jaundiced was his eye, that they were neither worth looking at nor worth talking to, and he did not grudge their companionship to any man.

To Lavarcham, at last, he opened his mind.

“I must marry, Lavarcham, my soul.”

“There is plenty of time for that, master,” said the wily woman.

“While I have no wife,” Conachúr replied, “the people will talk of the wife I had, and the only way to stop that is to give them something else to talk of.”

“It is true, indeed,” said Lavarcham.

“I foresee,” he continued, “that I shall be compelled to marry some one I do not care for.”

“In that case, master, you will be saved the trouble of choosing, for you may take the first that comes.”

“They seem to resemble one another like peas in a pod. Are women all alike, my friend?”

“They are much of a pattern, master.”

“And yet——” said the king, brooding deeply on one that had fled.

“Our little ward,” Lavarcham continued thoughtfully, “is rather unusual.”

“What age is she now?” said the dull king.

“Sixteen years and a few months.”

“So much. We must think of marrying her to some friend. Perhaps one of our kinsmen of Scotland. I must be reminded again of it.”

“Come and see her, master, and then you will be able to decide how she should be disposed of.”

“I shall go to see her some day.”

CHAPTER VIII

Deirdre’s education in the art of the king continued, but it proceeded now somewhat obliquely to its former trend.

What woman in Lavarcham’s place could avoid treating her master’s later affairs without something of sentimentality creeping into the terms? And what young girl could regard Maeve otherwise than as a heroine for having dared so shocking a scandal, and such a round of perils? As Lavarcham detailed Maeve, Deirdre interpreted her, and at the close of the statement the judgement of each was so different, so opposed, that a third person might have marvelled at the tricks the understanding can play; for what was black to the one was not only white to the other, but it was crimson and purple and gold; and what was treachery to Lavarcham gleamed on Deirdre like a candid sunrise.

We assimilate knowledge less through our intellects than through our temperaments; and a young person can by no effort look through the eyes of an older. There are other ways by which a mutual perception can be so deflected that the same thing is not similarly viewed, and so Lavarcham’s appreciation of Maeve’s conduct would differ from Conachúr’s, as his would be unlike Cathfa’s or Bricriu’s or Fergus mac Roy’s, and as these would be obscure to one another. The element of self-interest in each would act as a prism, and each would understand as much of the tale as he desired to understand, but no more, and would forgive or condemn on these arrested findings.

To Lavarcham Maeve’s flight was treachery and deserved punishment; but it was not, in her thought, a misfortune for which even Conachúr need weep. She had thoroughly disliked Maeve, for though she could impose on every one she could not impress that imperious lady, and she had never dared tell one half of Maeve’s doings lest the violent queen should suspect, and loose a slash that would cut her in two halves in the very presence of the king.

The departure of Maeve meant also the departure of mac Roth, and to be free from that jovial, crafty eye was so great a relief that Lavarcham could have wept in thankfulness; for to be a spy is a simple thing, an occupation like any other, but to be spied upon when one is a spy is a monstrous inversion of what is proper, and might easily give one palpitations of the heart.

Mac Roth had her frightened, and could have cowed her any time he wished. In her own craft he was her master, for, after all, she was only a household spy, but he was a—spy. She could glean from the kitchen or the Sunny Chamber everything that was there; but she must have walls about her and work behind those; while mac Roth did not mind whether he was in a room or in a forest; he would spy in a beehive; he would spy on the horned end of the moon; he would spy in the middle of the sea, and would know which wave it was that drowned him, and which was the wave that urged it on.

Lavarcham was not only glad that Maeve was gone, she was jubilant; and, moreover, it gave her an opportunity that she could scarcely have hoped for to advance her babe in life without parting from her, and to strengthen all her own grips on fortune.

Hitherto, when she had spoken of Conachúr to Deirdre she spoke of the king’s majesty, but now, insensibly, she began to talk of a great man bowed under misfortune and a proper subject for female pity. But she could not wipe out the king’s majesty with that sponge nor alter one lineament of the portrait she had taken ten years to limn.

The king persisted for Deirdre, stern and aloof and almost incredibly ancient, looming out from and overshadowing her infancy like a fairy tale; and was he not contemporary with Lavarcham, herself old enough to be remembered but not thought of? Deirdre was interested in the king as she was interested in the people of the Shí, [6] without expectation, and with a little fear.

But to her reasonings and objections Lavarcham had one answer:

“My soul and dear treasure, you cannot speak about men, for you have not seen any.”

And at last one day Deirdre replied:

“Indeed, mother, I have seen them, these men you tell me of.”

Lavarcham stared at her.

“And,” the gleeful child continued, “I have spoken to them.”

Her foster-mother became smoother than silk, and soft as the lap of kindness.

“Tell me about that, my one love, and tell me how men seem to you now that you have seen them.”

“It is not hard to tell,” replied Deirdre; “men are as ugly as donkeys, and,” she continued, “they are just as nice.”

“As ugly and as nice as donkeys!” Lavarcham quoted in a daze.

“Yes, mother, and I love them because they are so nice and ugly and good.”

“But what men are you talking of, my star?”

“I am talking of the men outside the walls.”

“The guards?”

“Of course.”

“And when did you see them?”

Deirdre laughed.

“Why, I have seen them ever since I was that height,” and she poised her hand two feet above the ground.

Lavarcham laughed at her and waggled a reproving finger.

“You have not seen them very often, all the same.”

“I have indeed,” the girl replied triumphantly. “I have seen them every day of my life for the last ten years.”

“And you spoke to them?”

“Of course I did. I know every one of them as well as I know you.”

“You do not, Deirdre!”

“I do so: I know their names, and who they are married to, and how many children they have. O, I know everything about them.”

“Sly little fairy of the hills,” cried her perplexed guardian, “you are poking fun at Lavarcham.”

“I surely am not,” Deirdre replied positively.

“Well, tell me about these men that are ugly and nice like donkeys.”

“Very well,” cried Deirdre, “I shall prove to you that I know them.

“You must know,” she narrated, “that each of these men is always at the same place outside the wall, but some of them are on guard during the daytime and others are on guard during the night. Every second week they change this order and the ones that have been on duty in the night take up day duty, and the day men replace them; and so they change and change about, year in and year out, under the charge of two captains and eight ancients. There are an hundred of these men altogether; twenty-five of them march from point to point all around the walls during the day, but in the night seventy-five men march to and from smaller points. In the day also, one captain and two ancients march around and overlook the twenty-five guards, but a captain and six ancients march about the men who are on duty at night.”

“Ah-ha,” cried Lavarcham, “you have been told all this by the women servants.”

“They only tell me tales of the men of Dana and of the Shí, and of how their children were born, and of the proper way to cure pimples.”

“Well, tell me more,” sighed Lavarcham, “until I see what it is that you do know.”

“The captain of the troop is named Daol, but the men call him Fat-face. He has fourteen children and is unhappily married, for he has told me many times that if he had a better wife he would be a better man. One day when his wife was baking him a cake she baked a spell into it, so that, although he had never felt ache or pain before, he was racked all that day with torments; and ever since, when the moon changes and the wind goes round, he gets pains in his bones, and he beats his wife when he gets home on the head of it.”

“You are certainly acquainted with this Fat-face.”

“I love him. He wears a great leathern belt with a sword hung from it, and, when he orders the men, he thrusts his two hands down through the belt, stretches his legs very wide apart, and roars at them—but how he roars! ‘Troop!’ he roars: ‘turn by the right hand: trot’; and all the dear old men trot with their heads down very thoughtfully, until he roars at them to stop trotting, and then they all sneeze, and talk about their feet.

“Sometimes he lets me drill the men.”

“He should not,” said Lavarcham.

“He had to,” the girl replied, “for I threw stones at him from the top of the wall until he agreed to let me do it. But that was a long time ago.”

“He should have reported all this.”

“Do you mean he should have told on me,” cried Deirdre indignantly. “Indeed I should like to see Fat-face daring to tell anything about me. Why, the men would beat him if he told. I would get down off the wall and beat him myself.”

[6] The Shí = Fairyland.

CHAPTER IX

This conversation greatly exercised Lavarcham, and she cast about for some means whereby she might restrain her ward. It was waste of time, as she quickly saw, for who that has been charged with a young person aged sixteen has not been forced at last to renounce all real guardianship?

At that age the time has passed for prohibitions, and the time has not yet come when advice can be listened to except in the form of flattery. The young body is eager for experience, and will be satisfied with nothing less actual, so the older person must grant freedom of movement or be run to death by that untiring energy. For a while the youngster will drink deeply, secretly, of her own will, and will then disengage for herself that which is serious and enduring from that which is merely pleasant and unprofitable. For all people who are not mentally lacking are sober-minded by instinct, and when the eager limbs have had their way the being looks inwardly, pining to exercise the mind and to equip itself for true existence.

At fourteen years of age Deirdre was not the untameable little savage she had been at twelve, and at the age of sixteen she had begun to long for some one to whom she might submit her will and from whom she could receive the guidance and wisdom and refreshment which she divined to be in herself, but which she could not reach.

Her fury of activity would be broken by equal periods of languor, wherein she would sit as in a daze, staring at the sky and not seeing it, or looking at the grass with a vague wonder as to what this was upon which her eyes were resting. Wild creatures or tame would trot or amble before her, but she was only conscious of a movement without a form. A bird might light and flirt and hop and fly, and her forsaken mind would touch those facts without gaining information from them, and would lose itself behind the movement vaguely, blindly, dizzily, until the bird mixed into the sky and the sky rounded and receded and disappeared, leaving her eyes nothing to rest on and her errant mind without any support.

She would look on her arms, as they hung helplessly in the grass, and wonder that they were so unoccupied, and wonder that they were so empty. And an oppression came to her heart, gentle enough, but without end, as though something stirred there that could not stir, as though something sought to weep and could not weep; so that she must weep for it, and grieve for it, and be of a tenderness to that unknown beyond all the tenderness that she had sensed about her. And these idle tears would arouse, or assuage her, so that she wondered why she wept, and she would leap from such nonsense and speed away like one distraught with excess of life and energy.

She would become affectionate then. She mothered the cow and its lanky calf; the peeping rabbit and her popping brood. The shaggy mare and her dear, shy foaleen, an arm about each neck, listened to a conversation they loved and seemed to understand. When she tried to leave them they trotted behind with gentle, persistent feet and eyes of such pleading that she must run passionately back, crying that she would come again, that she would surely come back to them on the morrow. There was not a nest she did not know of, and the young grey mother, snuggling among the leaves, would look gravely out at the grey eye that peeped within, and would hearken to a cooing so delicious, so burthened with love, that her broody hour would pass uncounted, and she would forget her mate abroad, and the wide airs of the tree-tops.

At night the moon could woo her so passionately she must forsake her bed and go tiptoe among dark corridors until she came into the presence. What wild counsel did she receive from the glowing queen! Or was it the unmoving quietude that whispered without words; intimations of—what? Shy touches at the heart, so that she, who feared nothing, would look about her, startled as a young roe, who senses something on the wind, and flies without more query.

How lovely to her was that suspense and fear, when her every nerve thrilled to a life more poignant than she had surmised; when something that did not happen was perpetually occurring; when, as it were in a moment, she might be told—what secrets! or be cautioned of something imminent and advised!

She lost herself in the moon, wooing it, wooed by it, until she seemed to move in the moon, and the moon to move in her; a sole whiteness, a sole chillness, one equal potency—For what? for that, for it, for something, for nothing, for everything. She submitted her destiny to the delicate sweet lady of the sky, and one night, beckoned to, drawn at, surrounded, a small moon shining in the moon, she went on and on, passing the grass to the turf; leaving the turf for the stony places; from there to the wall, and over the wall also; so lightly, so imperceptibly, so moonily, the drowsy guard did not see; or if he saw ’twas but a moonbeam that rose and fell, that fluttered and faded, that lapsed over a piece of hollow ground and glimmered away on the slope, merging in the silver flood and the shades of ebony, and gone while he rubbed his eyes.

So she marched towards destiny.

She went among the darkness of trees, and farther, where the wood grew thin, into a dappled dancing of jet and silver; and, beyond, to where young voices called and called and called.

Such fresh young voices she had never heard before, used as she was to the dry, clipped utterance of Lavarcham, the toothless mumble of the servants, the rusty bawling of Fat-face as of an obstinate door that told of aches and reluctances, and the wheezing and grunting of his stiff companions. She stayed listening to those voices, young as her own, and as sweet; rattling like the waters that tumble and ride in the river; chattering like a nestful of young birds in spring; soaring up and falling down with an infinite eagerness and joy; until it seemed that a lark’s song and the flight of a swallow had come together and fused into one streaming of sound.

Standing behind a vast black tree her astonished heart released itself in tears, and she wept for her cloistered youth, and for all that she did not know she had missed.

Then boldly she trod forward and sat herself resolutely at the camp-fire of the sons of Uisneac.

CHAPTER X

They received her with the scant show of surprise which youth, so proud of appearances, so jealous of its own dignity, extends to the unknown, and, after the brief word of welcome, and swift surmising glance, the conversation which she had interrupted renewed itself, perhaps a shade more boisterously because they had been surprised, a little more hardily because they knew one was listening who was not of their company and might be critical.

Soon, in their own despite, something ceremonious crept on them, overpowering their boisterousness and making each self-conscious, until, by the inevitable degrees, silence hovered and threatened about the fire, and for moments nothing moved but the eye that flickered and wandered into woodland vistas, where delicate dark trees stood rimmed in silver, and everything on the ground crept and fled as the boughs swayed and the moon spilled through them.

But the silence only endured long enough for the look to become frank and the mutual examination a judgement. Then the eldest of the three boys seized the conversation to himself and upheld it, for he saw that their guest was so afflicted with shyness that she could not move hand or foot, and could not have replied if one had addressed her.

He spoke for occupation also, because, having looked at her, he feared or was too shy to look again; feared, too, that the others might observe his embarrassment; and, being one to whom action was a first habit, he did what he could do when he found that there was something which he could not do.

He did it well.

Listening to him Deirdre knew what was the mid surge of the stream she had listened to, the top singing of the song she had heard. This was the lark sustained at the top of flight, and the others the mazy pattern of the swallows’ wings. Listening she could collect herself; and, in a while, daring to hear, she dared to see, and then she heard no more; for when the eye is filled the ear is no more attended, and all that may be of beauty is there englobed, radiant, sufficient, excessive.

How should I paint Naoise[7] as Deirdre saw him, or show Deirdre as she appeared to the son of Uisneac? For than Deirdre there was no girl so beautiful unless it might be Emer the daughter of Forgall, soon to be wooed by Cúchulinn; and Naoise himself could not be bettered by any among the men of his land unless it was by the “small, dark man, comeliest of the men of Eirè,” Cúchulinn himself.

When we endeavour to tell of these things words cannot stand the trial. It may be done by music, or by allusion, as the poets have always done, saying that this girl is like the moon, or like the Sky-Woman of the Dawn, when they would indicate a beauty beyond what we know; and that she is like a rose when they would tell of a gentle and proud sweetness; that her wrist is crisp and delicate like the delicate foam that mantles on a sunny tide; that the wise bee nestled in her bosom, finding more of delight there than the hive gives; that she walks as a cloud, or as a queen-woman of the sky, seen only in vision, so that all other sights are but half seen thereafter and are scarcely remembered.

In these grave ways we may approach perfection, indicating distantly that which cannot be unveiled in speech; or we may tell of the abasement which comes on the heart when beauty is seen; the sadness which is sharper than every other sadness; the despair that overshadows us when the abashed will concedes that though it would overbear everything it cannot master this, and that here we renounce all claim; for beauty is beyond the beast, and like all else of quality it can only be apprehended by its equal and enjoyed where it gives itself.

DEIRDRE