Preface

I

T THINK this book is the best that has come out of Ireland in my time. Perhaps I should say that it is the best book that has ever come out of Ireland ; for the stories which it tells are a chief part of Ireland's gift to the imagination of the world — and it tells them perfectly for the first time. Translators from the Irish have hitherto retold one story or the other from some one version, and not often with any fine understanding of English, of those changes of rhythm for instance that are changes of the sense. They have translated the best and fullest manuscripts they knew, as accurately as they could, and that is all we have the right to expect from the first translators of a difficult and old literature. But few of the stories really begin to exist as great works of imagination until somebody has taken the best bits out of many manuscripts. Sometimes, as in Lady Gregory's version of Deirdre, a dozen manuscripts have to give their best before the beads are ready for the necklace. It has been as necessary also to leave out as to add, for generations of copyists, who had often but little sympathy with the stones they copied, have mixed versions together in a clumsy fashion, often repeating

viii PREFACE

one incident several times, and every century has ornamented what was once a simple story with its own often extravagant ornament. One does not perhaps exaggerate when one says that no story has come down to us in the form it had when the story-teller told it in the winter evenings. Lady Gregory has done her work of compression and selection at once so firmly and so reverently that I cannot believe that anybody, except now and then for a scientific purpose, will need another text than this, or than the version of it the Gaelic League is about to publish in Modern Irish. When she has added her translations from other cycles, she will have given Ireland its Mabinogion, its Morte D'Arthur, its Nibelungenlied. She has already put a great mass of stories, in which the ancient heart of Ireland still lives, into a shape at once harmonious and characteristic ; and without writing more than a very few sentences of her own to link together incidents or thoughts taken from different manuscripts, without adding more indeed than the story-teller must often have added to amend the hesitation of a moment. Perhaps more than all she had discovered a fitting dialect to tell them in. Some years ago I wrote some stories of mediaeval Irish life, and as I wrote I was sometimes made wretched by the thought that I knew of no kind of English that fitted them as the language of Morris' prose stories — the most beautiful language I had ever read — fitted his journeys to woods and wells beyond the world. I knew of no language to write about Ireland in but raw modern English ; but now Lady Gregory has discovered a speech as beautiful as that of Morris, and a living speech into the bargain.

PREFACE ix

As she moved about among her people she learned to love the beautiful speech of those who think in Irish, and to understand that it is as true a dialect of English as the dialect that Burns wrote in. It is some hundreds of years old, and age gives a language authority. One finds in it the vocabulary of the translators of the Bible, joined to an idiom which makes it tender, compassionate, and complaisant, like the Irish language itself. It is certainly well suited to clothe a literature which never ceased to be folk-lore even when it was recited in the Courts of Kings.

II

Lady Gregory could with less trouble have made a book that would have better pleased the hasty reader. She could have plucked away details, smoothed out characteristics till she had left nothing but the bare stories ; but a book of that kind would never have called up the past, or stirred the imagination of a painter or a poet, and would be as little thought of in a few years as if it had been a popular novel.

The abundance of what may seem at first irrelevant invention in a story like the death of Conaire, is essential if we are to recall a time when people were in love with a story, and gave themselves up to imagination as if to a lover. One may think there are too many lyrical outbursts, or too many enigmatical symbols here and there in some other story, but delight will always overtake one in the end. One comes to accept without reserve an art that is half epical, half lyrical,

X PREFACE

like that of the historical parts of the Bible, the art of a time when perhaps men passed more readily than they do now from one mood to another, and found it harder than we do to keep to the mood in which one tots up figures or banters a friend.

Ill

The Church when it was most powerful created an imaginative unity, for it taught learned and unlearned to climb, as it were, to the great moral realities through hierarchies of Cherubim and Seraphim, through clouds of Saints and Angels who had all their precise duties and privileges. The story-tellers of Ireland, perhaps of every primitive country, created a like unity, only it was to the great aesthetic realities that they taught people to climb. They created for learned and unlearned alike, a communion of heroes, a cloud of stalwart witnesses ; but because they were as much excited as a monk over his prayers, they did not think sufficiently about the shape of the poem and the story. One has to get a little weary or a little distrustful of one's subject, perhaps, before one can lie awake thinking how one will make the most of it. They were more anxious to describe energetic characters, and to invent beautiful stories, than to express themselves with perfect dramatic logic or in perfectly-ordered words. They shared their characters and their stories, their very images, with one another, and handed them down from generation to generation ; for nobody, even when he had

PREFACE xi

added some new trait, or some new incident, thought of claiming for himself what so obviously lived its own merry or mournful life. The wood-carver who first put a sword into St Michael's hand would have as soon claimed as his own a thought which was perhaps put into his mind by St Michael himself. The Irish poets had also, it may be, what seemed a supernatural sanction, for a chief poet had to understand not only innumerable kinds of poetry, but how to keep himself for nine days in a trance. They certainly believed in the historical reality of even their wildest imaginations. And so soon as Christianity made their hearers desire a chronology that would run side by side with that of the Bible, they delighted in arranging their Kings and Queens, the shadows of forgotten mythologies, in long lines that ascended to Adam and his Garden. Those who listened to them must have felt as if the living were like rabbits digging their burrows under walls that had been built by Gods and Giants, or like swallows building their nests in the stone mouths of immense images, carved by nobody knows who. It is no wonder that one sometimes hears about men who saw in a vision ivyleaves that were greater than shields, and blackbirds whose thighs were like the thighs of oxen. The fruit of all those stories, unless indeed the finest activities of the mind are but a pastime, is the quick intelligence, the abundant imagination, the courtly manners of the Irish country people.

xii PREFACE

IV

William Morris came to Dublin when I was a boy, and I had some talk with him about these old stories. He had intended to lecture upon them, but " the ladies and gentlemen " — he put a communistic fervour of hatred into the phrase — knew nothing about them. He spoke of the Irish account of the battle of Clontarf, and of the Norse account, and said, that one saw the Norse and Irish tempers in the two accounts. The Norseman was interested in the way things are done, but the Irishman turned aside, evidently well pleased to be out of so dull a business, to describe beautiful supernatural events. He was thinking, I suppose, of the young man who came from Aoibhell of the Grey Rock, giving up immortal love and youth, that he might fight and die by Murrugh's side. He said that the Norseman had the dramatic temper, and the Irishman had the lyrical. I think I should have said epical and romantic rather than dramatic and lyrical, but his words, which have so much greater authority than mine, mark the distinction very well, and not only between Irish and Norse, but between Irish and other un-Celtic literatures. The Irish story-teller could not interest himself with an unbroken interest in the way men like himself burned a house, or won wives no more wonderful than themselves. His mind constantly escaped out of daily circumstance, as a bough that has been held down by a weak hand suddenly straightens itself out. His imagination was always running oflf to Tir-nan-oge, to the Land of

PREFACE xiil

Promise, which is as near to the country-people of to-day, as it was to Cuchulain and his companions. His behef in its nearness, cherished in its turn the lyrical temper, which is always athirst for an emotion, a beauty which cannot be found in its perfection upon earth, or only for a moment. His imagination, which had not been able to believe in Cuchulain's greatness, until it had brought the Great Queen, the red eye-browed goddess to woo him upon the battlefield, could not be satisfied with a friendship less romantic and lyrical than that of Cuchulain and Ferdiad, who kissed one another after the day's fighting, or with a love less romantic and lyrical than that of Baile and Aillinn, who died at the report of one another's deaths, and married in Tir-nan-oge. His art, too, is often at its greatest when it is most extravagant, for he only feels himself among solid things, among things with fixed laws and satisfying purposes, when he has reshaped the world according to his heart's desire. He understands as well as Blake that the ruins of time build mansions in eternity, and he never allows anything, that we can see and handle, to remain long unchanged. The characters must remain the same, but the strength of Fergus may change so greatly, that he, who a moment before was merely a strong man among many, becomes the master of Three Blows that would destroy an army, did they not cut off the heads of three little hills instead, and his sword, which a fool had been able to steal out of its sheath, has of a sudden the likeness of a rainbow. A wandering lyric moon must knead and kindle perpetually that moving world of cloaks made put of the fleeces of Manannan ; of armed men who

xiv PREFACE

change themselves into sea-birds ; of goddesses who become crows ; of trees that bare fruit and flower at the same time. The great emotions of love, terror, and friendship must alone remain untroubled by the moon in that world, which is still the world of the Irish country-people, who do not open their eyes very wide at the most miraculous change, at the most sudden enchantment. Its events, and things, and people are wild, and are like unbroken horses, that are so much more beautiful than horses that have learned to run between shafts. One thinks of actual life, when one reads those Norse stories, which were already in decadence, so necessary were the proportions of actual life to their efforts, when a dying man remembered his heroism enough to look down at his wound and say, " Those broad spears are coming into fashion " ; but the Irish stories make one understand why the Greeks call myths the activities of the daemons. The great virtues, the great joys, the great privations come in the myths, and, as it were, take mankind between their naked arms, and without putting off their divinity. Poets have taken their themes more often from stories that are all, or half, mythological, than from history or stories that give one the sensation of history, understanding, as I think, that the imagination which remembers the proportions of life is but a long wooing, and that it has to forget them before it becomes the torch and the marriage-bed.

PREFACE XV

One finds, as one expects, in the work of men who were not troubled about any probabilities or necessities but those of emotion itself, an immense variety of incident and character and of ways of expressing emotion. Cuchulain fights man after man during the quest of the Brown Bull, and not one of those fights is like another, and not one is lacking in emotion or strangeness ; and when one thinks imagination can do no more, the storyof the Two Bulls,emblematic of all contests,suddenly lifts romance into prophecy. The characters too have a distinctness one does not find among the people of the Mabinogion, perhaps not even among the people of the Morte D' Arthur. One knows one will be long forgetting Cuchulain, whose life is vehement and full of pleasure, as though he always remembered that it was to be soon over ; or the dreamy Fergus who betrays the sons of Usnach for a feast, without ceasing to be noble ; or Conall who is fierce and friendly and trustworthy, but has not the sap of divinity that makes Cuchulain mysterious to men, and beloved of women. Women indeed, with their lamentations for lovers and husbands and sons, and for fallen rooftrees and lost wealth, give the stories their most beautiful sentences ; and, after Cuchulain, one thinks most of certain great queens — of angry, amorous Maeve, with her long pale face ; of Findabair, her daughter, who dies of shame and of pity ; of Deirdre who might be some mild modern housewife but for her prophetic wisdom. If one does not set Deirdre's lamentations among the

xvi PREFACE

greatest lyric poems of the world, I think one may be certain that the wine-press of the poets has been trodden for one in vain ; and yet I think it may be proud Emer, Cuchulain's fitting wife, who will linger longest in the memory. What a pure flame burns in her always, whether she is the newly-married wife fighting for precedence, fierce as some beautiful bird, or the confident housewife, who would awaken her husband from his magic sleep with mocking words ; or the great queen who would get him out of the tightening net of his doom, by sending him into the Valley of the Deaf, with Niamh, his mistress, because he will be more obedient to her ; or the woman whom sorrow has sent with Helen and seult and Brunnhilda, and Deirdre, to share their immortality in the rosary of the poets.

" ' And oh ! my love ! ' she said, ' we were often in one another's company, and it was happy for us ; for if the world had been searched from the rising of the sun to sunset, the like would never have been found in one place, of the Black Sainglain and the Grey of Macha, and Laeg the chariot-driver, and myself and Cuchulain.'

" And after that Emer bade Conall to make a wide, very deep grave for Cuchulain ; and she laid herself down beside her gentle comrade, and she put her mouth to his mouth, and she said : ' Love of my life, my friend, my sweetheart, my one choice of the men of the earth, many is the women, wed or unwed, envied me until to-day ; and now I will not stay living after you.' "

PREFACE xvii

VI

We Irish should keep these personages much in our hearts, for they lived in the places where we ride and go marketing, and sometimes they have met one another on the hills that cast their shadows upon our doors at evening. If we will but tell these stories to our children the Land will begin again to be a Holy Land, as it was before men gave their hearts to Greece and Rome and Judea. When I was a child I had only to climb the hill behind the house to see long, blue, ragged hills flowing along the southern horizon. What beauty was lost to me, what depth of emotion is still perhaps lacking in me, because nobody told me, not even the merchant captains who knew everything, that Cruachan of the Enchantments lay behind those long, blue, ragged hills !

W. B. YEATS.

March 1902.

CONTENTS

PAGE

BIRTH OF CUCHULAIN I

BOY DEEDS OF CUCHULAIN 7

THE COURTING OF EMER 21

BRICRIU'S FEAST, AND THE WAR OF WORDS OF THE

WOMEN OF ULSTER .48

THE CHAMPIONSHIP OF ULSTER 62

THE HIGH KING OF IRELAND 82

FATE OF THE CHILDREN OF USNACH I04

THE DREAM OF ANGUS I43

CRUACHAN 148

THE WEDDING OF MAINE MORGOR 159

THE WAR FOR THE BULL OF CUAILGNE . . . .175

THE AWAKENING OF ULSTER 245

THE TWO BULLS 268

THE ONLY JEALOUSY OF EMER 276

ADVICE TO A PRINCE 294

THE SONS OF DOEL DERMAIT 297

BATTLE OF ROSNAREE 302

THE ONLY SON OF AOIFE 313

THE GREAT GATHERING OF MUIRTHEMNE . . . . 320

DEATH OF CUCHULAIN 334

CUCHULAIN OF MUIRTHEMNE

BIRTH OF CUCHULAIN

TN the time long ago, Conchubar, son of Ness, was King of Ulster, and he held his court in the palace of Emain Macha. And this is the way he came to be king. He was but a young lad, and his father was not living, and Fergus, son of Rogh, who was at that time King of Ulster, asked his mother Ness in marriage.

Now Ness, that was at one time the quietest and kindest of the women of Ireland, had got to be unkind and treacherous because of an unkindness that had been done to her, and she planned to get the kingdom away from Fergus for her own son. So she said to Fergus : " Let Conchubar hold the kingdom for a year, so that his children after him may be called the children of a king ; and that is the marriage portion I will ask of you."

" You may do that," the men of Ulster said to him ; " for even though Conchubar gets the name of being king, it is yourself that will be our king all the time." So Fergus agreed to it, and he took Ness as his wife, and her son Conchubar was made king in his place,

A

2 BIRTH OF CUCHULAIN

But all through the year, Ness was working to keep the kingdom for him, and she gave great presents to the chief men of Ulster to get them on her side. And though Conchubar was but a young lad at that time, he was wise in his judgments, and brave in battle, and good in shape and in form, and they liked him well. And at the end of the year, when Fergus asked to have the kingship back again, they consulted together ; and it is what they agreed, that Conchubar was to keep it. And they said : " It is little Fergus thinks about us, when he was so ready to give up his rule over us for a year ; and let Conchubar keep the kingship," they said, " and let Fergus keep the wife he has got."

Now it happened one day that Conchubar was making a feast at Emain Macha for the marriage of his sister Dechtire with Sualtim son of Roig. And at the feast Dechtire was thirsty, and they gave her a cup of wine, and as she was drinking it, a mayfly flew into the cup, and she drank it down with the wine. And presently she went into her sunny parlour, and her fifty maidens along with her, and she fell into a deep sleep. And in her sleep, Lugh of the Long Hand appeared to her, and he said : " It is I myself was the mayfly that came to you in the cup, and it is with me you must come away now, and your fifty maidens along with you." And he put on them the appearance of a flock of birds, and they went with him southward till they came to Brugh na Boinne, the dwelling-place of the Sidhe. And no one at Emain Macha could get tale or tidings of them, or know where they had gone, or what had happened them.

It was about a year after that time, there was another feast in Emain, and Conchubar and his chief men were sitting at the feast. And suddenly they saw from the window a great flock of birds, that lit on the ground and began to eat up everything before them, so that not so much as a blade of grass was left.

THE FLIGHT OF THE BIRDS 3

The men of Ulster were vexed when they saw the birds destroying all before them, and they yoked nine of their chariots to follow after them. Conchubar was in his own chariot, and there were following with him Fergus son of Rogh, and Laegaire Buadach, the BattleWinner, and Celthair son of Uithecar, and many others, and Bricriu of the bitter tongue was along with them.

They followed after the birds across the whole country southward, across Slieve Fuad, by Ath Lethan, by Ath Garach and Magh Gossa, between Fir Rois and Fir Ardae ; and the birds before them always. They were the most beautiful that had ever been seen ; nine flocks of them there were, linked together two and two with a chain of silver, and at the head of every flock there were two birds of different colours, linked together with a chain of gold ; and there were three birds that flew by themselves, and they all went before the chariots, to the far end of the country, until the fall of night, and then there was no more seen of them.

And when the dark night was coming on, Conchubar said to his people : " It is best for us to unyoke the chariots now, and to look for some place where we can spend the night."

Then Fergus went forward to look for some place, and what he came to was a very small poor-looking house. A man and a woman were in it, and when they saw him they said : " Bring your companions here along with you, and they will be welcome." Fergus went back to his companions and told them what he had seen. But Bricriu said : " Where is the use of going into a house like that, with neither room nor provisions nor coverings in it ; it is not worth our while to be going there."

Then Bricriu went on himself to the place where the house was. But when he came to it, what he saw was a grand, new, well-lighted house ; and at

4 BIRTH OF CUCHULAIN

the door there was a young man wearing armour, very tall and handsome and shining. And he said : " Come into the house, Bricriu ; why are you looking about you ? " And there was a young woman beside him, fine and noble, and with curled hair, and she said : " Surely there is a welcome before you from me." " Why does she welcome me ? " said Bricriu. " It is on account of her that I myself welcome you," said the young man. " And is there no one missing from you at Emain ? " he said. " There is surely," said Bricriu. " We are missing fifty young girls for the length of a year." " Would you know them again if you saw them ? " said the young man. " If I would not know them," said Bricriu, " it is because a year might make a change in them, so that I would not be sure." " Try and know them again," said the man, " for the fifty young girls are in this house, and this woman beside me is their mistress, Dechtire. It was they themselves, changed into birds, that went to Emain Macha to bring you here." Then Dechtire gave Bricriu a purple cloak with gold fringes ; and he went back to find his companions. But while he was going he thought to himself: " Conchubar would give great treasure to find these fifty young girls again, and his sister along with them. I will not tell him I have found them. I will only say I have found a house with beautiful women in it, and no more than that."

When Conchubar saw Bricriu, he asked news of him. " What news do you bring back with you, Bricriu ? " he said. " I came to a fine well-lighted house," said Bricriu ; " I saw a queen, noble, kind, with royal looks, with curled hair ; I saw a troop of women, beautiful, well-dressed ; I saw the man of the house, tall and open-handed and shining." " Let us go there for the night," said Conchubar. So they brought their chariots and their horses and their arms ; and they were hardly in the house when every sort of food and of drink, some they knew and

BIRTH OF CUCHULAIN 5

some they did not know, was put before them, so that they never spent a better night. And when they had eaten and drunk and began to be satisfied, Conchubar said to the young man : " Where is the mistress of the house that she does not come to bid us welcome ? " " You cannot see her to-night," said he, " for she is in the pains of childbirth."

So they rested there that night, and in the morning Conchubar was the first to rise up ; but he saw no more of the man of the house, and what he heard was the cry of a child. And he went to the room it came from, and there he saw Dechtire, and her maidens about her, and a young child beside her. And she bade Conchubar welcome, and she told him all that had happened her, and that she had called him there to bring herself and the child back to Emain Macha. And Conchubar said : "It is well you have done by me, Dechtire ; you gave shelter to me and to my chariots ; you kept the cold from my horses ; you gave food to me and my people, and now you have given us this good gift. And let our sister, Finchoem, bring up the child," he said. " No, it is not for her to bring him up, it is for me," said Sencha son of Ailell, chief judge and chief poet of Ulster. " For I am skilled ; I am good in disputes ; I am not forgetful ; I speak before any one at all in the presence of the king ; I watch over what he says ; I give judgment in the quarrels of kings ; I am judge of the men of Ulster ; no one has a right to dispute my claim, but only Conchubar."

"If the child is given to me to bring up," said Blai, the distributer, "he will not suffer from want of care or from forgetfulness. It is my messages that do the will of Conchubar; I call up the fighting men from all Ireland ; I am well able to provide for them for a week, or even for ten days ; I settle their business and their disputes ; I support their honour ; 1 get satisfaction for their insults."

6 BIRTH OF CUCHULAIN

" You think too much of yourself," said Fergus. " It is I that will bring up the child ; I am strong ; I have knowledge ; I am the king's messenger ; no one can stand up against me in honour or riches ; I am hardened to war and battles ; I am a good craftsman ; I am worthy to bring up a child. I am the protector of all the unhappy ; the strong are afraid of me ; I am the helper of the weak."

" If you will listen to me at last, now you are quiet," said Amergin, " I am able to bring up a child like a king. The people praise my honour, my bravery, my courage, my wisdom ; they praise my good luck, my age, my speaking, my name, my courage, and my race. Though I am a fighter, I am a poet ; I am worthy of the king's favour ; I overcome all the men who fight from their chariots ; I owe thanks to no one except Conchubar ; I obey no one but the king."

Then Sencha said : " Let Finchoem keep the child until we come to Emain, and Morann, the judge, will settle the question when we are there "

So the men of Ulster set out for Emain, Finchoem having the child with her. And when they came there Morann gave his judgment. " It is for Conchubar," he said, " to help the child to a good name, for he is next of kin to him ; let Sencha teach him words and speaking ; let Fergus hold him on his knees ; let Amergin be his tutor." And he said : " This child will be praised by all, by chariot drivers and fighters, by kings and by wise men ; he shall be loved by many men ; he will avenge all your wrongs ; he will defend your fords ; he will fight all your battles."

And so it was settled. And the child was left until he should come to sensible years, with his mother Dechtire and with her husband Sualtim. And they brought him up upon the plain of Muirthemne, and the name he was known by was Setanta, son of Sualtim.