things worthy of him; she tests his wit as well as his courage, she makes him accept her conditions.[1] In the great tragic tale of ancient Ireland, the Fate of the Sons of Usnech, Deirdre—born like Helen or Gudrun, to be a cause of strife among men, of sorrow and ruin to whomsoever she loves—Deirdre takes her fate into her own hands, and woos Noisi with outspoken passionate frankness. The whole story is conceived and told in a far more "romantic" strain than is the case with parallel stories from Norse tradition, the loves of Helgi and Sigrun, or those of Sigurd and Brunhild-Gudrun. And if the lament of Deirdre over her slain love lacks the grandeur and the intensity with which the Norse heroines bewail their dead lords, it has, on the other hand, an intimate, a personal touch we should hardly have looked for in an eleventh century Irish epic.[2]
Another link between the Celtic sagas and the romances is
- ↑ The Tochmarc Emer, or the Wooing of Emer by Cuchullain, has been translated by Professor Kuno Meyer in the Archæological Review, Nos. 1-4 (London, 1888). The original text is found partly in the Leabhar na h-Uidhre, partly in later MSS.
- ↑
The fate of the Sons of Usnech is known to us in two main redactions, one found in the Book of Leinster (compiled in the middle of the twelfth century from older MS.) printed by Windisch, Irische Texte (first series) pp. 67-82, and translated by M. Poinsignon, Revue des Traditions Populaires, III, pp. 201-207. A text printed and translated by J. O'Flanagan (Transactions of the Gaelic Society of Dublin, 1808, pp. 146-177), agrees substantially with this. The second redaction has only been found in later MSS. Mr. Whitley Stokes has given text and translation from a fifteenth century MS. (Irische Texte, II. 2, pp. 109-178), and O'Flanagan has edited a very similar version (loc. cit. pp. 16-135). This second version is fuller and more romantic; in it alone is to be found Deirdre's lament on leaving Scotland, one of the earliest instances in post-classic literature of personal sympathy with Nature.
But the earlier version, though it bear like so much else in the oldest Irish MS. obvious traces of abridgment and euhemerism, is also full of the most delicate romantic touches. Part of Deirdre's lament over the slain Noisi may be paraphrased thus:—"Fair one, loved one, flower of beauty; beloved, upright and strong; beloved, noble and modest warrior. When we wandered through the woods of Ireland, sweet with thee was the night's sleep! Fair one, blue-eyed, beloved of thy wife, lovely to me at the trysting place came thy clear voice through the woods. I cannot sleep; half the night my spirit wanders far among throngs of men. I cannot eat or smile. Break not to-day my heart; soon enough shall I lie within my grave. Strong are the waves of the sea, but stronger is sorrow, Conchobor."
