Chapter V: Canto THE FIRST

Ere yet great Miledh’s sons to Erin came,
Lords of the Gael, Milesian styled more late,
An earlier tribe, Tuatha was their name,
Likewise Dedannan, ruled the Isle of Fate,
A tribe that knew nor clan, nor priest, nor bard,
Wild as the waves, and as the sea-cliffs hard.

Some say that race of old from Greece exiled
Long time had sojourned in the frozen North
Roaming Norwegian wood and Danish wild:
To Erin thence more late they issued forth,
And thither brought two gifts both loved and feared,
The ‘Lia Fail,’ and Ogham lore revered.[16]

Fiercer they were, not manlier, than the Gael,
Large-handed, swift of foot, dark-haired, dark-eyed,
With sudden gleams athwart their faces pale,
Transits of fancies swift, or angry pride:
Strange lore they boasted, imped by insight keen;
Blackened at times by gusts of causeless spleen.

These, when the white fleet of the Gael drew nigh
Green Erin’s shore, their heritage decreed,
O’er-meshed, through rites unholy, earth and sky
With sudden gloom. The invaders took no heed,
But dashed through dark their galleys on the strand;
Then clapped their hands, and laughing leaped to land.

Around them flocked Tuatha’s race in guile,
Unarmed, with mocking voice and furtive mien,
And scoffed: ‘Not thus your fathers fought erewhile!
Say, call ye warriors knaves that creep unseen,
While true men sleep, up inlet dim, and fiord,
Filching the land they proved not with their sword?’

Then to the Gael their bard, Amergin, spake:
‘Sail forth, my sons, nine waves across the deep,
And when this island-race are armed, come back;
Take then their realm by force; and, taking, keep!’
The Gael sailed forth, nine waves; then turned, and gazed--
Night wrapt the isle, and storm by magic raised!

Round Erin’s shores like leaves their ships were blown:
Strewn on her reefs lay bard and warrior drowned:
Not less the Gael upreared ere long that throne
Two thousand years through all the West renowned.
O’er Taillten’s field God held the scales of Fate:
That last dread battle closed the dire debate.

There fell those three Tuatha queens who gave
The land their names--they fell by death discrowned:[17]
There many a Gaelic chieftain found his grave:
Thenceforth the races twain adjusted bound
And right, at times by league, at times by war;
Nor any reigned as yet from shore to shore.

Still here and there Tuatha princes ruled
Now in green vale, and now on pale blue coast,
A warrior one, and one in magic schooled;
The graver made Druidic lore their boast,
And knew the secret might of star and leaf:
Grey-haired King Bove stood up of these the chief.

Southward by broad Lough Derg his palace stood:
Northward, beside Emania’s lonely mere,
In Finnahá, embowered mid lawn and wood,
King Lir abode, a warrior, not a seer;
Well loved was he, plain man with great, true heart,
Who loathed, despite his race, the sorcerer’s art.

Five centuries lived he ere that better light
Gladdened the earth from Bethlehem: ne’ertheless
He judged his land with justice and with might,
Tempering the same at times with gentleness;
And gave the poor their due; and made proclaim,
‘Let no man smite the old; the virgin shame.’

His prime was spent in wars: in middle life
He bade a youthful princess share his throne:
Nor e’er had monarch yet a truer wife
With tenderer palm or voice of sweeter tone:
The one sole lady of that race was she
Sun-haired, with large eyes azure as the sea.

She moved amid the crafty as a child;
Amid the lawless, chaste as unsunned maid;
Amid the unsparing, as a turtle mild;
Wondering at wrong; too gentle to upbraid:
Yet many a fell resolve, as she rode by,
Died at its birth--the ill-thinker knew not why!

Sadness before her fled: in years long past
As on a cliff the warriors sang their songs
A harper maid, with eyes that stared aghast,
Had chaunted, ‘Not to us this isle belongs!
The Fates reserve it for a race more true,
Ye children of Dedannan’s stock, than you!’

And since she scorned her music to abate,
Nor ceased to freeze their triumph with her dirge,
The princes and the people rose in hate
And hurled her harp and her into the surge:
Yet still, halfway ’twixt midnight and the morn,
That dirge swelled up, by tempest onward borne!

Remembering oft this spectre of his youth
King Lir would sit, a frown upon his brow:
Then came the queen with words of peace and truth;
‘Mourn they that sinned! A child that hour wert thou!
Thou rul’st this land to-day: in years to be
Who best deserves shall wield her sovereignty.’

Then would the monarch doff his sullen mood
With kingly joy, and, bright as May-day’s morn,
Ride forth amid his hounds through wild and wood,
Thrilling far glens with echoes of his horn;
Or meet the land’s invaders face to face
Well pleased, and homeward hew them with disgrace.

Thus happy lived the pair, and happier far
When four fair children graced the royal house,
Fairer than flowers, more bright than moon or star
Shining through vista long of forest boughs.
Finola was the eldest, eight years old:
The yearling, Conn, best loved of all that fold.

These beauteous creatures with their mother shared
Alike her blissful nature and sweet looks,
Like her swan-soft, swan-white, blue-eyed, bright-haired,
With voices musical as birds or brooks:
Beings they seemed reserved for some great fate,
Mysterious, high, elect, and separate.

At times they gambolled in the sunny sheen;
At times, Fiacre and Aodh at her side,
Finola paced the high-arched alleys green,
At once their youthful playmate and their guide:
A mother-hearted child she walked, and pressed
That infant, daily heavier, to her breast.

Great power of Love that, wide as heaven, dost brood
O’er all the earth, and doest all things well!
Light of the wise, and safeguard of the good!
Nowhere, methinks, thou better lov’st to dwell
Than in the hearts of innocents that still,
By dangerous love untempted, work Love’s will!

Thou shalt be with them when the sleet-wind blows
Not less than in the violet-braided bower:
Through thee the desert sands shall bud the rose,
The wild wave anthems sing! In grief’s worst hour
A germ of thine shall breed that quenchless Faith
Amaranth of life, and asphodel of death.

Ah lot of man! Ah world whose life is change!
Ah sheer descent from topmost height of good
To deepest gulf of anguish sudden and strange!
A nation round their monarch’s gateway stood:
All day there stood they, whispering in great dread:
The herald came at last--‘The Queen is dead!’

In silence still they stood an hour and more,
Till through the West had sunk the great red sun,
And from the castle wall and turrets hoar
The latest crimson utterly had gone:
At last the truth had reached them! then on high
An orphaned People hurled its funeral cry.

They hurled it forth again and yet again,
The dreadful wont of that barbaric time;
Cry after cry that reached the far off main,
And, echoing, seemed from cloud to cloud to climb;
Then lifted hands like creatures broken-hearted,
Or sentenced men; and homeward, mute, departed.

Fast-speeding Time, albeit the wounded wing
He may not bind, brings us at least the crutch;--
Winter was over, and the on-flying Spring
Grazed the sad monarch’s brow with heavenly touch,
And raised the head, now whitening, from the ground,
And stanched, not healed, the heart’s eternal wound.

King Bove, chief sovereign of the dark-haired race,
Sent to him saying, ‘Quit thee like a man!
The Gaels, our scourge, and Erin’s sore disgrace,
Advance, each day, their armies, clan on clan;
Against them march thy host with mine, and take
To wife my daughter, for thy children’s sake.’

Lir sadly mused; but answered: ‘Let it be!’
And drave with fifty chariots in array
To where the land’s chief river like a sea,
There named Lough Derg, spreads out in gulf and bay
And many a woody mountain sees its face
Imaged in that clear flood with softened grace.

There with King Bove the widowed man abode
Two days amid great feastings. On the third
The king led forth his daughter--o’er her glowed
A dim veil jewel-tissued--with this word:
‘Behold thy wife! The world proclaims her fair:
I know her strong to love, and strong to dare.’

And Lir made answer: ‘Fair she is as when
A mist-veiled yew, red-berried, stands in state:
Can love, you say! Love she my babes! and then
With her my love shall bide; if not--my hate.’
And she, a crimson on her dusky brow,
Replied, ‘If so it be, then be it so!’

King Lir, a fortnight more in revels spent,
Made journey to his castle in the North
With her, his youthful consort, well content.
Arrived, in rapture of their loving mirth
Forth rushed into his arms his children four
Bright as those wavelets on their blue lake’s shore;--

On whom the new queen cast a glance oblique
One moment’s space; then, flinging wide her arms,
With instinct changed, and impulse lightning-like,
Clasped them in turn and wondered at their charms,
And cried, ‘If e’er a stepmother could love
I of that tribe renowned will tenderest prove.’

And so by her great loving of those four
Still from her husband won she praises sweet
And plaudits from his people more and more;
Her own she called them: nor was this deceit:
She loved them with a fitful love--a will
To make them or to mar, for good or ill.

She wooed them still with shows, with flowers, with fruit;
Daily for them new sports she sought and found:
Yet, if their father praised them, she was mute,
And, when he placed them on his knee, she frowned,
Murmuring, ‘How blue their eyes! their cheek how pale!
Their voices too are voices of the Gael!’

Meantime, as month by month in grace they grew,
Their father loved them better than before;
And so, one eve, their slender cots he drew
Each from its place remote, and lightly bore,
And laid them ranged before his royal bed;
And o’er the four a veil gold-woven spread;

Their mother’s bridal-veil: and still as dawn
Was in its glittering tissue caged and caught
He left his couch, and, that light veil withdrawn,
Before his children stood in silent thought;
And, if they slept, he kissed them in their sleep,
Then watched them with clasped hands in musings deep.

And, if they slept not, from their balmy nest
With under-sliding arms he raised them high,
And clasped them each, successive, to his breast,
Or on them flashed the first light from the sky:
Then laid him by his mute, sleep-feigning bride,
And slept once more: and oft in sleep he sighed.

Which things abhorring, she her face averse
Turned all day steadfast from the astonished throng:
And next, as one that broods upon a curse,
She sat in her sick-chamber three weeks long,
And never raised her eyes, nor made complaint,
Dark as a fiend and silent as a saint.

Lastly to Lir she spake: ‘Daily I sink
Downward to death. I wither in my prime:
Home to my father I would speed, and drink
Once more the breezes of my native clime.
All night in sleep along Lough Derg I strayed,
And wings of strength about my shoulders played.

‘These four--thy children--with me I will take
To please my father’s eye; he loves them well:
Thou too, whene’er thy leisure serves, shalt make
Thither thy journey.’ All the powers of Hell
Thrilled at that speech in penal vaults below:
But Lir, no fraud suspecting, answered, ‘Go!’

Therefore next morn when earliest sunrise smote
Green mead to golden near the full-fed stream,
They caught four steeds that grazed thereby remote,
And yoked abreast beside the chariot beam;
And when the sun was sinking toward the West
By Darvra’s lake drew rein, and made their rest.

Then the bad queen, descending, round her cast
A baleful look of mingled hate and woe,
And with those babes into a thicket passed,
And drew a dagger from her breast; and lo!
She struck them not, but only wailed and wailed--
In her so strongly womanhood prevailed.

The mood was changed. She smiled that smile which none
How wise soe’er, beholding, could resist,
And drew those children to her, one by one;
Then wailed once more, and last their foreheads kissed,
And cried with finger pointing to the lake,
‘Hence! and in that clear bath your pastime take!’

She spoke, and from their silken garb forth-sliding,
Ere long those babes were sporting in the bay:
And, as it chanced, the eddy past them gliding
Wafted a swan’s plume: ’twas less white than they:
Frowning, the queen beheld them, and on high
Waved thrice her Druid wand athwart the sky:

Then, standing on the marge wan-cheeked, wide-eyed,
As near they drew, awe-struck and wondering,
Therewith she smote their golden heads, and cried,
‘Fly hence, ye pale-faced children of the king!
Cleave the blue mere, or on through ether sail;
No more his loved ones, but a dolorous tale!’

Straightway to snow-white swans those children turned:
And, sideway as they swerved the creatures four
Fixed on her looks with human grief that yearned;
Then slowly drifted backward from the shore;
While loud with voice unchanged, Finola cried,
‘Bad deed is thine, false queen and bitter bride!

‘Bad deed afflicting babes that harmed thee not;
Bad deed, and to thyself an evil dower:
Disastrous more than ours shall be thy lot!
Thou too shalt feel the weight of Druid power:
From age to age thy penance ne’er shall cease:
Our doom, though long it lasts, shall end in peace.’

Then rang a wild shriek from that dreadful shape:
‘Long, long, aye long shall last those years of woe!
Here on this lake from misty cape to cape
Three centuries ye shall wander to and fro;
Three centuries more shall stem with heavier toil
Far Alba’s waves, the black sea-strait[18] of Moyle.

‘Lastly three centuries where the Eagle-Crest[19]
O’er-looks the western deep, and Inisglaire,
Upon the mountain waves that know not rest
Shall be your rolling palace, foul or fair,
Till comes the Tailkenn,[20] sent to sound the knell
Of darkness, and ye hear his Christian bell.’

Lo, as a band of lilies, white and tall
Beneath a breeze of morning bend their head
High held in virgin state majestical,
So meekly cowered those swans in holy dread
Hearing that promised Tailkenn’s blissful name:
For they long since had heard in dream the same.

Then fell a dew of meekness on the proud
Noting their humble heart; and drooped her front;
And sorrow closed around her like a cloud;
And thus with other voice than was her wont
To those soft victims of her wrath she cried:
‘Woe, woe! Yet Fate must rule, whate’er betide!

‘The deed is done; yet thus much I concede:
In you the human heart shall never fail,
Changed though ye be, and masked in feathery weed:
Your voice shall sweet remain as voice of Gael;
And all who hear your songs shall sink in trance
And, sleeping, dream some great deliverance.’

She spake, and smote her hands; and at her word
Once more the attendants caught the royal steeds
Grazing in peace beside the hornèd herd
Amid the meadow flowers, and yellow weeds:
And fiercely through the night that dark one drave,
And reached Lough Derg what time above its wave

The sun was rising; and at set of sun
Entered once more her father’s palace gate:
Seated thereby, his nobles, every one,
Arose and welcomed her with loving state:
She answered naught, but sternly past them strode
And found her girlhood’s bower, and there abode.

But when of Lir King Bove had made demand,
She answered thus: ‘Enough! My Lord is naught;
Nor will he trust his children to thy hand,
Lest thou should’st slay them.’ Long in silent thought
The old man stood, then murmured in low tone,
‘I loved those children better than mine own!’

That night in dream King Lir had anguish sore,
And southward, ere the dawn, rode far away
With many a chief to see his babes once more
Beside Lough Derg; and lo, at close of day
Nighing to Darvra’s lake, the westering sun
In splendour on the advancing horsemen shone.

Straightway from that broad water’s central stream
Was heard a clang of pinions and swift feet--
Unchanged at heart those babes had caught that gleam;
Instant from far had rushed, their sire to greet
Spangling the flood with silver spray; and ere
That sire had reached the margin they were there.

Then, each and all, clamorous they made lament
Recounting all their wrong, and all the woe;
And Lir, their tale complete, his garment rent,
Till then transfixed like marble shape; and lo!
Three times, heart-grieved, that concourse raised their cry
Piercing the centre of the low-hung sky.

But Lir knelt down upon the shining sand,
And cried, ‘Though great the might of Druid charms,
Return and feel once more your native land,
And find once more and fill your father’s arms!’
And they made answer: ‘Till the Tailkenn come
We tread not land! The waters are our home.’

But when Finola saw her father’s grief
She added thus: ‘Albeit our days are sad,
The twilight brings our pain in part relief:
And songs are ours by night that make us glad:
Yea, each that hears our music, though he grieve,
Rejoices more. Abide, for it is eve.’

So Lir, and his, couched on the wave-lipped sod
All night; and ever as those songs up swelled
A mist of sleep upon them fell from God,
And healing Spirits converse with them held.
And Lir was glad all night: but with the morn
Anguish returned; and thus he cried, forlorn:

‘Farewell! The morn is come; and I depart:
Farewell! Not wholly evil are things ill!
Farewell, Finola! Yea, but in my heart
With thee I bide: there liv’st thou changeless still:
O Aodh! O Fiacre! the night is gone:--
Farewell to both! Farewell, my little Conn!’

Southward the childless father rode once more,
And saw at last beyond the forests tall
The great lake and the palace on its shore;
And, entering, onward passed from hall to hall
To where King Bove majestic sat and crowned,
High on a terrace, with his magnates round;

A stately terrace clustered round with towers,
And jubilant with music’s merry din,
Beaten by resonant waves, and bright with flowers:
There--but apart--she stood that wrought the sin,
Like one that broods on one black thought alone
Seen o’er a world of happy hopes o’erthrown.

The throng made way: onward the wronged one strode
To Bove, sole-throned, and lifting in his hand
For royal sceptre that Druidic rod
Which gave him o’er the Spirit-world command;
Then, pointing to that traitress, false as fair,
That wronged one spake: ‘There stands the murderess!--there!’

Straight on the King Druidic insight fell;
And mirrored in his mind as cloud in lake
His daughter’s crime, distinct and visible,
Before him stood. He turned to her and spake:
‘Thou hear’st the charge: how makest thou reply?’
And she: ‘The deed is mine! I wrought it! I!’

Then spake King Bove with countenance like night:
‘Of all dread shapes that traverse earth or sea,
Or pierce the soil, or urge through heaven their flight,
Say, which abhorrest thou most?’ And answered she:
‘The shape of Spirits Accursed that ride the storm:’
And he: ‘Be thine henceforth that demon form!’

He spake, and lifted high his Druid Wand:--
T’ward him perforce she drew: she bowed her head:
Down on that head he dropp’d it; and beyond
The glooming lake, with bat-like wings outspread
O’er earth’s black verge the shrieking Fury passed;
Thenceforth to circle earth while earth shall last.

As when, on autumn eve from hill or cape
That slants into gray wastes of western sea,
The sun long set, some shepherd stares agape
At cloud that seems through endless space to flee
On raven pinions down the moaning wind,
Thus on that Fury stared they, well-nigh blind.

Then spake the king with hoary head that shook,
‘I loved thy babes: now therefore let us go
Northward, and on their blameless beauty look,
Though changed, and hear their songs: for this I know
By Druid art, they sing the whole night long,
And heaven and earth are solaced by their song.

Northward ere dawn they rode with a great host;
And loosed their steeds by Darvra’s mirror clear
What time purpureal evening like a ghost
Stepped from the blue glen on the glimmering mere:
And camped where stood the ruminating herds
With heads forth leaning t’ward those human birds.

And, ever o’er the wave those swans would come
To hear man’s voice, and tell their tale to each,
Swift as the wind, and whiter than the foam;
Yet never mounted they the bowery beach,
And still swerved backward from the beckoning hand,
Revering thus their stepmother’s command.

And ever, when the sacred night descended,
While with those ripples on the sandy bars
The sighing woods and winds low murmurs blended,
Their music fell upon them from the stars,
And they gave utterance to that gift divine
In silver song or anthem crystalline.

Who heard that strain no more his woes lamented:
The exiled chief forgat his place of pride:
The prince ill-crowned his ruthless deed repented:
The childless mother and the widowed bride
Amid their locks tear-wet and loosely straying
Felt once again remembered touches playing.

The words of that high music no one knew;
Yet all men felt there lived a meaning there
Immortal, marvellous, searching, strengthening, true,
The pledge of some great future, strange and fair,
When sin shall lose her might, and cleansing woe
Shall on the Just some starry crown bestow.

Lulled by that strain the prophet king let drop
In death his Druid-Staff by Darvra’s side;
And there in later years with happy hope
King Lir, that mystic requiem listening, died:
And there those blissful sufferers bore their wrong
All day in weeping, and all night in song.

Not once ’tis whispered in that ancient story
They raised their voice God’s justice to arraign:
All patient suffering is expiatory:
Their doom was linked with hope of Erin’s gain;
And, like the Holy Elders famed of old,
Those babes on that high promise kept their hold.

And they saw great towers built, and saw them fall;
And saw the little seedling tempest-sown;
And generations under torch and pall
Borne forth to narrow graves ere long grass-grown;
And all these things to them were as a dream,
Or shade that sleeps on some fast hurrying stream.

More numerous daily flocked to that still shore
Peace-loving spirits: yea, the Gaelic clans
And tribes Dedannan, foemen there no more,
From the same fountains brimmed their flowing cans,
And washed their kirtles in the same pure rills,
And brought their corn-sheaves to the self-same mills.

Thus, though elsewhere the sons of Erin strove
From Aileach’s coast, and Uladh’s marble cliffs,
To where by banks of Lee, and Beara’s cove,
The fishers spread their nets and launched their skiffs,
Round Darvra’s shores remained inviolate peace;
There too the flocks and fields had best increase.

In that long strife the Gael the victory won:
Tuatha’s race, Dedannan, disappeared;
Yet still the conqueror whispered, sire to son,
‘Their progeny survives, half scorned, half feared,
The Fairy Host; and mansions bright they hold
On moonlight hills, and under waters cold.

‘To snare the Gael, perpetual spells they weave:
O’er the wet waste they bid the meteor glide:
They raise illusive cliffs at morn and eve
On wintry coasts: sea-mantled rocks they hide:
And shipwrecked sailors eye them o’er the waves,
Dark shapes pygmean couchant in sea-caves.

‘Some say that, mid the mountains’ sunless walls,
They throng beneath their stony firmament,
An iron-handed race. At intervals
Through chasm stream-cloven, and through rocky rent,
The shepherd hears their multitudinous hum
As of far hosts approaching swift yet dumb.

‘In those dread vaults, Magian and Alchemist,
Supreme in every craft of brain and hand,
The mountains’ mineral veins they beat and twist;
And on red anvils forge them spear and brand
For some predestined battle. Yea, men say
The island shall be theirs that last great day!’

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