Deirdre
by
“Her beauty filled the old world of the Gael with a
sweet, wonderful, and abiding rumour. The name of
Deirdre has been as a harp to a thousand poets. In a
land of heroes and brave and beautiful women, how shall
one name survive? Yet to this day and for ever, men will
remember Deirdre….”
Fiona Macleod.
So long ago, that it was before the birth of our Lord, so says tradition, there was born that
“Morning star of loveliness,
Unhappy Helen of a Western land,”
who is known to the Celts of Scotland as Darthool, to those of Ireland as Deirdre. As in the story of Helen, it is not easy, or even possible in the story of Deirdre, to disentangle the old, old facts of actual history from the web of romantic fairy tale that time has woven about them, yet so great is the power of Deirdre, even unto this day, that it has been the fond task of those men and women to whom the Gael owes so much, to preserve, and to translate for posterity, the tragic romance of Deirdre the Beautiful and the Sons of Usna.
In many ancient manuscripts we get the story in more or less complete form. In the Advocates’ Library of Edinburgh, in the Glenmasan MS. we get the best and the fullest version, while the oldest and the shortest is to be found in the twelfth-century Book of Leinster.
But those who would revel in the old tale and have Deirdre lead them by the hand into the enchanted realm of the romance of misty, ancient days of our Western Isles must go for help to Fiona Macleod, to Alexander Carmichael, to Lady Gregory, to Dr. Douglas Hyde, to W. F. Skene, to W. B. Yeats, to J. M. Synge, and to those others who, like true descendants of the Druids, possess the power of unlocking the entrance gates of the Green Islands of the Blest.
Conchubar, or Conor, ruled the kingdom of the Ultonians, now Ulster, when Deirdre was born in Erin. All the most famous warriors of his time, heroes whose mighty deeds live on in legend, and whose title was “The Champions of the Red Branch,” he gathered round him, and all through Erin and Alba rang the fame of the warlike Ultonians.
There came a day when Conor and his champions, gorgeous in their gala dress of crimson tunic with brooches of inlaid gold and white-hooded shirt embroidered in red gold, went to a feast in the house of one called Felim. Felim was a bard, and because not only was his arm in war strong and swift to strike, but because, in peace, his fingers could draw the sweetest of music from his harp, he was dear to the king. As they feasted, Conor beheld a dark shadow of horror and of grief fall on the face of Cathbad, a Druid who had come in his train, and saw that his aged eyes were gazing far into the Unseen. Speedily he bade him tell him what evil thing it was that he saw, and Cathbad turned to the childless Felim and told him that to his wife there was about to be born a daughter, with eyes like stars that are mirrored by night in the water, with lips red as the rowan berries and teeth more white than pearls; with a voice more sweet than the music of fairy harps. “A maiden fair, tall, long haired, for whom champions will contend … and mighty kings be envious of her lovely, faultless form.” For her sweet sake, he said, more blood should be spilt in Erin than for generations and ages past, and many heroes and bright torches of the Gaels should lose their lives. For love of her, three heroes of eternal renown must give their lives away, the sea in which her starry eyes should mirror themselves would be a sea of blood, and woe unutterable should come on the sons of Erin. Then up spoke the lords of the Red Branch, and grimly they looked at Felim the Harper: