Chapter VIII: Prologue (2)

Meantime the queen, ere dawned that ninetieth morn,
Mused, ill at ease; ‘Daily my people die,
And many a stormy brow on me is bent:--
What if they turn on me like starving hounds
That rend their huntsman?’ In her ear once more
Sounded the word of Cailitin; ‘The man
To fight Cuchullain is the man he loves:
His death were death to both.’ Then came the kings
Confederate, saying; ‘Send Ferdīa forth!
Ferdīa is the mightiest of our host:
Ferdīa is Cuchullain’s chief of friends:
Westward of Alba in the Isle of Skye
Scatha, that rock-browed northern warrioress,
In amplest lore of battles trained them both:
Except the Gae-Bulg, every feat of arms
Is known to each alike.’
The queen gave way:
She sent her herald to the man she scorned
With offers huge, tract vaster than his own
Not barren like his mountains billow-beat,
But laughing in the lap of Ai’s plains;
A war-car deftly carved and ribbed with brass;
And, for his clansmen, raiment of all dyes,
Twelve suits. A stalwart man, yet fair as strong
The Firbolg towered, dark-eyed, dark-haired, pale-faced,
Unlike the Gael. Melodious was his voice
But deeper than a lion’s. Ceaseless thought
On immemorial wrongs--he brooded still
O’er glories of Moytura, and Tailltenn,
Their great assemblies, and their solemn games,
And kingly graves--had cast upon his brow
Perpetual shade; and ever, on the march,
If high on crags there stood some Gaelic tomb
Wind-worn a thousand years, he passed it by
With face averse, muttering, ‘New men! New men!
We note not such!’ The herald’s task discharged,
He answered thus, not turning; ‘Tell your queen
That I, a Firbolg, serve, but not for hire,
A cause not mine. Cuchullain is my friend:
Better I died than he!’
O’er-awed though wroth
The queen despatched in statelier embassage
Three warriors, and three ollambs, and three bards:
With reverence they addressed him. ‘Chief and Prince!
True prince, though scion of a house deject,
The queen, who judges all men by their deeds,
This day hath in thine honour made a feast
And sues to it thy presence. Kings alone
Partake that banquet; Ailill first, and she
Of princesses the fairest, Finobar!’
Scornful the Firbolg answered; ‘Finobar!
She whose bright face hath frosted with death’s white
Full four score faces of war-breathing men
Sent to that Ford successive! Let it be!
Tell them I join their feast: tell them beside
Their bribe shall prove base gold!’
In mantle blue
Clasped by a silver torque, and silver belt
Enringed with silver rings innumerable
That evening from his tent Ferdīa strode
With large attendance. Ailill and the queen
Received him on their threshold. At the board
Princes alone had place. High up, o’er each
Glittered upon the wall his blazoned shield.
King Ailill placed Ferdīa on his right;
Beyond him sat the Princess. In her ear
Her mother whispered as she neared that seat:
She answered with her eyes.
Well stricken harp
Gladdened that festive throng; and many a tale,
The rage of hunger lessening by degrees,
Ailill recounted of the heroic past,
When, youthful yet, he ranged ’mid friends and foes
Such men as breathed no longer. Servitors
Brimmed oft the goblets; and Ferdīa’s brow,
As song to song succeeded, tale to tale,
Remitted its first sternness. Finobar
Unconsciously had dropp’d her jewell’d hand
Not far from his: her large and dusky eyes,
Shyly at first from his withdrawn, at last
Full frankly met them: on her lips the smile
Increased, though waveringly, then waned, not died,
And in it sadness mingled as she spake:
‘But late yon harper told us of a dream--
My earliest of remembered dreams was sad;
I saw some princess of your earlier stock
Whose lover late had perished, slain in fight
By ours, methought them recent. At her feet--
Why there I scarcely know--I made lament:
“All thou hast lost for thy sake I renounce:
For me, like thee, no bridal rites forever!
Dead on thy marriage garland lies mine own;
For lo! the stain accursed is on our sword:
Thy race came first: this Island should be theirs!”’
Ferdīa listened; and the icy pride
Thawed in his bosom. With a sudden change
The jubilant music into martial soared,
Wild battle-chaunt. Upon the warrior’s hand
Still nigh to hers, there lay a scar. With eye
Reverently dewed the princess gazed thereon:
‘Aye, of your war-deeds I have heard so long,
It seems as though since childhood--Whence that wound?
What battle left it there? What sister bound it?
I would that sister were my sister too,
Partaker of my heart, my hope, my life:
I have no youthful friend!’ She paused:--again
But now with paler cheek, and hurried, spake:
‘Beware my mother! She would send you forth
Her knight to meet Cuchullain! Shun that man!
Cuchullain spares not: four score warriors dead
Avouch it. Chief of Gaels is he! Ah me!
The last great battle ’twixt the old race and new
Would find the same sad ending as the first.’
The Firbolg frowned: she faltered, ‘Am I false,
False to my race’--and tears were in her voice--
‘False to my race, who cannot wish such ending?’
She paused; again she questioned of his wars:
He told her of his sire’s. Like one who thinks
Not speaks, she murmured low; ‘A soothsayer
Thus warned my mother--I was then a child--
“Bring not that maid to war-fields! She shall die
Grieving for some dead warrior.”’
Changed once more
The martial songs to amorous and of mirth,
And once again the torches’ golden flame
Laughed on the cup new-brimmed. Again she spake,
That lovesome one, ‘I love not songs of love!
Better the war-song! Best, methinks, of all
That lullaby half war and sorrow half
Breathed by some bride while o’er her wounded lord
Softly descends the sleep:--so softly sank
Cold dews of evening on this flower still wet.’
She took it from her breast, and held it near:
He smelt it; kissed it; kept it. With a smile
She added; ‘For your sister? Have you one?
If so, ’tis likely she resembles me:
They chide me oft; “No Gaelic face is thine,
Dark-eyed, dark-browed, a rebel since its birth!”’
She ceased; again she spake: ‘Even now, methinks,
That lullaby I spake of I can hear!
Is it for thee, my friend, or Cuchullain?’
That hand, of flower amerced, drew nearer yet
To his. That smile had passed. Tearful she turned
On him those luminaries of love and death,
Her eyes, like stars in midnight waters glassed;
Turned them, but spake no longer. Through his brain
Shivered their shrouded lustre; through his blood:
The sanguine currents from the warrior’s heart
Long sad, to female sympathies unused,
Drank up at once that splendour, and the tears
That splendour’s strange eclipse.
And yet, that hour,
Seen in some lonelier region of his soul
Another presence, O how different, stood!
Again, that hour, he saw those guileless eyes,
Blue as the seas they gazed on; saw once more
That hair like winter sunshine, brow snow-white,
That unvoluptuous form and virginal,
That love-unwakened breast with love for all,
Those hands that knew not what their touch conferred,
Those blithesome, wave-washed, scarce divided feet:--
The huge cliff smiled upon her; seemed to say,
‘Ah little nursling mine! Ah tender child
Of winds and rocks untender!’
Had he loved?
Sadness is celibate and eremite:
His converse long had been with injuries past,
In Scatha’s isle with frowning crags and clouds--
Aye, but with one beside, a friend, his nearest,
Who loved that maid, and sued her grace. Ferdīa
Had never spoken love; nor thought, ‘I love:’
And yet, that hour, was false.
A hundred harps
Rang out together, and the feast was o’er:
Murmured the rose-red lips; but what they said
He heard not. Mournfully at last withdrew
Those eyes, like eyes fated thenceforth to bear
One image on till death. She joined her mother.
The queen, as he departed, took his hand:
Alone they stood: she spake: ‘That noble scorn
Which spurned a bribe, approves a Firbolg’s worth:
’Twas Ailill sent that herald. ’Twas not I.
I know you now, and proffer royal terms
Confirmed by guarantee of all our kings:
Accept this combat; and the princess wed!
Ferdīa! I have made that offer thrice
To three dead warriors with the king’s consent,
Never till now with hers!’
He pledged his word:
The battle day was fixed; the morrow morn:
She took that glittering torque whose splendours clasped
Her mantle red; with it his mantle bound:
Then with attendance to his tent he passed.
Meantime, that night within his forest lair
In dreams Cuchullain lay, and saw in dreams,
Not recent fights, but ocean and that isle
Where with Ferdīa he had dwelt in youth,
With Scatha--and another. And in dream
He mused; ‘The dearest of my friends survives:
These wars will pass; Ferdīa then and I
Thenceforth are one for aye!’ That self-same hour
Sadly from troubled sleep the Firbolg woke,
Murmuring, as one in trance, ‘Against my friend!
Against my only friend!’ With gloomy brows
His clansmen watched him arming. One sole man
They feared; that man Cuchullain. Morn the while
Was dawning, though nor glowing cheek she raised
Nor ardent eyes, with silver wand not gold
Striking the unkindling portals of the East;
And, ere the sun had risen, Ferdīa bathed
Three times his forehead in the frosty stream;
And bade attend his charioteer; and drave
Begirt by stateliest equipage of war
Down to the river’s brim. In regal pomp
The host confederate followed, keen to watch
With Meave, and Ailill, and with Finobar,
All passions of a fight unmatched till then;
While clustered here and there, on rock or mound,
Minstrel and food-purveyor groom and leech
With healing herbs, and charms.
The sun arose
And smote the forest roof dew-saturate
As onward dashed through woodlands to the Ford
Cuchullain’s war-car. Nearer soon it rolled
Crushing the rocks. Above those wondrous steeds
That Great One glittered through the mist of morn,
Splendour gloom-veiled. Ferdīa’s charioteer
Half heard, half saw him. Spirit-rapt, yet awed,
Perforce thus sang he standing near the marge.
‘I hear the on-rushing of the car! I see
There throned that warrior not of mortal mould
Swathed in the morning. Dreadful are his wheels;
Dreadful as breaker arched, when on its crest
Stands Fear, and Fate upon the rock-strewn shore:
But not sea-rocks they crush, those brazen wheels,
But realms, and peoples, and the necks of men.
‘I see the war-car! Terrible it comes,
Four-peaked; and o’er those peaks a shadowy pall
Pavilioning dim crypt and caves of death:
I see it by the gleam of spears high held,
The glare of circling Spirits. Lo! the same
I saw far northward drifting, months gone by,
Ere yet that madness quelled the northern land.’
Then cried Ferdīa, stationed where huge trees
Shut out unwelcome vision: ‘For a bribe
Thou seest these portents, singing of my death!’
Once more, in agony prophetic, he--
‘The man within that car is Uladh’s Hound!
What hound? No stag-hound of the storm-swept hills:
No watch-hound watching by a merchant’s store:
The hound he is that tracks the steps of doom;
The hound of realms o’er-run, and hosts that fly;
The hound that laps the blood!’
Again he sang;
‘The Hound of Uladh is a hound with wings;
A hound man-headed! Yea, and o’er that head
Victory and empire, like two eagles paired
Sail onward, tempest-pinioned. Endless morn
Before him fleeting over seas and lands,
With shaft retorted lights his chariot-beam.
That chariot stays not, turns not: on it comes,
Like torrent shooting from a tall cliff’s brow,
Level long time; then downward borne!’
‘A bribe!’
Once more Ferdīa cried; ‘A bribe! a lie!
Traitor! for Ailill’s gold and gold of Meave,
Thou sing’st thy master’s death-song!’
By the stream
Cuchullain stood: not yet he knew his foe;
That foe who slowly to the Ford advanced
Full panoplied, and in his hand a spear.
Long gazed they each on each. Cuchullain spake:
‘Welcome howe’er thou com’st, Ferdīa! Once
In Scatha’s isle far otherwise thou camest
Morn after morn with tidings fresh of war
Plaything and pastime of our brother swords.
This day thou com’st invader of my land
Murthemné, bulwark broad of Uladh’s realm;
Thou com’st to burn my cities, spoil my flocks--
A change there is, Ferdīa!’ Stern of brow
The Firbolg answered; ‘Friends we were; not peers:
The younger thou. ’Twas thine to yoke my steeds;
Arm me for fight. A stripling hopes this day
With brandished spear to make a mountain flee!
Son of the Gael! long centuries since, thy race
Trampled my race:--their vengeance hour is near;
I bid thee to depart!’ To him his friend;
‘Ferdīa, in the old days on Scatha’s Isle
Thou wert my tribe, my household-stock, my race!
Questioned I then on battle-plain, or when
On frosty nights we couched beneath one rug,
Ancestral claims, traditions of the clan?
A change there is, Ferdīa!’
Thus with words
Or mild, or stern in hope to save not slay,
Those friends contended. Sternest was the man
Whose conscience most aggrieved him.
‘To this Ford
Thou cam’st the first, old comrade! choice of arms
Is therefore thine by right.’ Cuchullain spake:
Ferdīa chose the javelin. Arrow-swift,
While still the charioteers brought back the shaft,
The missiles flew. Keen-eyed as ocean bird
That, high in sunshine poised, glimpses his prey
Beneath the wave, and downward swooping slays him,
Each watched the other’s movements, if an arm
Lifted too high, or buckler dropp’d too low
Left bare a rivet. Long that fight endured:
Three times exhausted sank their hands: three times
They sat on rocks for respite, each the other
Eyeing askance, not silent; ‘Lo the man
Who shields an ox-like or a swine-like race
That strikes no blow itself!’ or thus; ‘Ah pledge
Of amity eterne in old time sworn!
Ferdīa, vow thy vow henceforth to maids!
The man-race nothing heeds thee!’
Evening fell
And stayed perforce that combat. Slowly drew
The warriors near; and as they noted, each,
The other bleeding, in its strength returned
The friendship unextinct: round either’s neck
That other wound his arms and kissed him thrice:
That night their coursers in the self-same field
Grazed, side by side: that night their charioteers
With rushes gathered from the self-same stream
Made smooth their masters’ beds, then sat themselves
By the same fire. Of every healing herb
That lulled his wounds Cuchullain sent the half
To staunch Ferdīa’s; while to him in turn
Ferdīa sent whate’er of meats or drinks
Held strengthening power or cordial, to allay
Distempered nerve or nimble spirit infuse,
In equal portions shared.
The second morn
They met at sunrise:--‘Thine the choice of arms;’
The Firbolg spake; the Gael made answer; ‘Spears!’
Then leaped the champions on their battle-cars
And launched them into battle. Dire their shock
In fiery orbits wheeling now; anon
Wheel locked in wheel. Profounder wounds by far
That day than on the first the warriors gored,
Since closer was the fight. With laughing lip
Not less that eve Cuchullain sang the stave
That chides in war ‘Fomorian obstinacy:’
Again at eve drew near they, slower now
For pain, and interwove fraternal arms:
Again their coursers in the self-same field
Grazed side by side, and from the self-same stream
Again their charioteers the rushes culled:
Again they shared alike both meats and drinks,
Again those herbs allaying, o’er their wounds
With incantations laid.
Forlorn and sad
Peered the third morning o’er the vaporous woods,
The wan grey river with its floating weed,
And bubble unillumined. From the marge
Cuchullain sadly marked the advancing foe:--
‘Alas, my brother! beamless is thine eye;
The radiance lives no longer on thy hair;
And slow thy step.’ The doomed one answered calm,
‘Cuchullain, slow of foot, but strong of hand
Fate drags his victim to the spot decreed:
The choice to-day is mine: I choose the sword.’
So spake the Firbolg; and they closed in fight:
And straightway from his heart to arm and hand
Rushed up the strength of all that buried race
By him so loved! Once more it swelled his breast:
In majesty re-clothed each massive limb,
And flashed in darksome light of hair and eye
Resplendent as of old. Surpassing deeds
They wrought, while circled meteor-like their swords,
Or fell like heaven’s own bolt on shield or helm.
Long hours they strove till morning’s purer gleams
Vanished in noon. Sharper that day their speech;
For, in the intenser present, years gone by
Hung but like pallid, thin, horizon clouds
O’er memory’s loneliest limit. Evening sank
Upon the dripping groves and shuddering flood
With rainy wailings. Not as heretofore
Their parting. Haughtily their mail they tossed
Each to his followers. In the self-same field
That night their coursers grazed not; neither sat
Their charioteers beside the self-same fire:
Nor sent they, each to other, healing herbs.
Ere morn the Firbolg drank the strength of dreams
Picturing his race’s wrong; and trumpet blasts
Went o’er him blown from fields of ancient wars:
And thus he mused, half-wakened; ‘Not for Meave;
Not for the popular suffrage; not for her
That maid who fain had held me from the snare,
Fight I that fight whose end shall crown this day:
O race beloved, this day your vengeance dawns
Red in the East! The mightiest of the Gaels
Goes down before me! What if both should die?
So best! Thus too the Firbolg is avenged!’
Thus mused he. Stately from his couch he rose,
And armed himself, sedate. Upon his breast
He laid, in iron sheathed, a huge, flat stone,
For thus he said, ‘Though many a feat of arms
Is mine, from Scatha learned, or else self-taught,
The Gae-Bulg is Cuchullain’s!’ On his head
He fixed his helm, and on his arm his shield
Sable as night, with fifty bosses bound,
All brass; the midmost like a noontide sun.
Cuchullain eyed him as he neared the Ford,
And spake to Leagh; ‘This day, if slack of hand
Thou notest me, or wearied, hurl, as wont,
Sharp storm of arrowy railing from thy lips
That so the battle-anger from on high
May flame on me.’ The choice of arms was his:
He chose ‘the Ford-Feat.’ On the Firbolg’s brow
A shadow fell:--‘All weapons there,’ he mused,
‘Have place alike: if on him falls the rage
He will not spare the Gae-Bulg!’
Well they knew,
Both warriors, that the fortunes of that day
Must end the conflict; that for one, or both,
The sun that hour ascending shone his last:
Therefore all strength of onset till that hour
By either loosed or hoarded, craft of fight
Reined in one moment but to spring the next
Forward in might more terrible, compared
With that last battle was a trivial thing;
Whilst every weapon, javelin, spear, or sword,
Lawful alike that day, scattered abroad
Huge flakes of dinted mail; from every wound
Bounded the life-blood of a heart athirst
For victory or for death. The vernal day
Panted with summer ardours, while aloft
Noontide, a fire-tressed Fury, waved her torch,
Kindling the lit grove and its youngling green
From the azure-blazing zenith. As the heat
So waxed the warriors’ frenzy. Hours went by:
That day they sought not rest on rock or mound,
Held no discourse. Slowly the sun declined;
And as wayfarers oft when twilight falls
Advance with strength renewed, so they, refreshed,
Surpassed their deeds at morning. With a bound
Cuchullain, from the bank high springing, lit
Full on the broad boss of Ferdīa’s shield,
His dagger-point down turned. With spasm of arm
Instant the Firbolg from its sable rim
Cast him astonished. Upward from the Ford
Again Cuchullain reached that shield: again
With spasm of knee Ferdīa flung him far,
While Leagh in scorn reviled him: ‘As the flood
Shoots on the tempest’s blast its puny foam;
The oak-tree casts its dead leaf on the wave;
The mill-wheel showers its spray; the shameless woman
Hurls on the mere that babe which was her shame,
So hurls he forth that fairy-child bewitched
Whom men misdeemed for warrior!’
Then from heaven
Came down upon Cuchullain, like the night,
The madness-rage. The Foes confronted met:
Shivered their spears from point to haft: their swords
Flashed lightnings round them. Fate-compelled, their feet
Drew near, then reached that stream which backward fled
Leaving its channel dry. While raged that fight
Cuchullain’s stature rose, huge bulk, immense,
Ascending still: as high Ferdīa towered
Like Fomor old, or Nemed from the sea,
Those shields, their covering late from foot to helm,
Shrinking, so seemed it, till above them beamed
Shoulders and heads. So close that fight, their crests
That waved defiance, mingled in mid air;
While all along the circles of their shields,
And all adown their swords, viewless for speed
Ran, mad with rage, the demons of dark moors
And war-sprites of the valleys, Bocanachs
And Banacahs, whose scream, so keen its edge,
Might shear the centuried forest as the scythe
Shears meadow grass. To these in dread response
Thundered far off from sea-caves billow-beat
And halls rock-vaulted ’neath the eternal hills,
That race Tuatha, giant once, long since
To pigmy changed, that forge from molten ores
For aye their clanging weapons, shield or spear,
On stony anvils, waiting still their day
Of vengeance on the Gael. That tumult scared
The horses of the host of Meave that brake
From war-car or the tethering rope, and spread
Ruin around. Camp-followers first, then chiefs
Innumerable were dragged along, or lay
’Neath broken axle, dead. The end was nigh:
Cuchullain’s shield splintered upon his arm
Served him no more; and through his fenceless side
Ferdīa drave the sword. Then first the Gael
Hurled forth this taunt; ‘The Firbolg, bribed by Meave,
Has sold his ancient friend!’ Ferdīa spake,
‘No Firbolg he, the man in Scatha’s Isle,
That won a maid, then left her!’ Backward stepp’d
Cuchullain paces three: he reached the bank;
He uttered low; ‘The Gae-Bulg!’ Instant, Leagh
Within his hand had lodged it. Bending low,
Low as that stream, the war-game’s crowning feat,
He launched it on Ferdīa’s breast. The shield,
The iron plate beneath, the stone within it,
Like shallow ice-films ’neath a courser’s hoof
Burst. All was o’er. To earth the warrior sank:
Dying, he spake: ‘Not thine this deed, O friend--
’Twas Meave who winged that bolt into my heart!’
Then ran Cuchullain to that great one dead,
And raised him in his arms, and laid him down
Beside the Ford, but on its northern bank,
Not in that realm by Ailill swayed and Meave:
Long time he looked the dead man in the face;
Then by him fell in swoon. ‘Cuchullain, rise!
The men of Erin be upon thee! Rise!’
Thus Leagh. He answered, waking; ‘Let them come!
To me what profit if I live or die?
The man I loved is dead!’
But by the dead
Cuchullain stood; and thus he made lament:
‘Ferdīa! On their head the curse descend
Who sent thee to thy death! We meet no more;
Never while sun, and moon, and earth endure.
‘Ferdīa! Far away in Scatha’s isle
A great troth bound us and a vow eterne
Never to raise war-weapons, each on each:--
’Twas Finobar that snared thee! She shall die.
‘Ferdīa! dearer to my heart wert thou
Than all beside if all were joined in one:
Dear was thy clouded face, and darksome eye;
Thy deep, sad voice; thy words so wise and few;
Dear was thy silence: dear thy slow, grave ways,
Not boastful like the Gael’s.’
Silent he stood
While Leagh in reverence from the dead man’s breast
Loosened his mail. There shone the torque of Meave:[33]
There where the queen had fixed it yet it lay.
Cuchullain clutched it. ‘Ha! that torque I spurned!
Dark gem ill-lifted from the seas of Death!
Swart planet bickering from the heavens of Fate!
With what a baleful beam thou look’st on me!
’Twas thou, ’twas thou, not I, that slew’st this man’--
He dashed it on the rock, and with his heel
Smote it to fragments.
Then, as one from trance
Waking, once more he spake: ‘Oh me--oh me,
That I should see that face so great and pale!
To-day face-whitening death is on that face;
And in my hand my sword:--’tis crimson yet.
That day when he and I triumphed in fight
By Formait’s lake o’er Scatha’s pirate foes
The woman fetched a beaker forth of wine,
And made us drink it both; and made us vow
Friendship eterne. O friend, my hand this day
Tendered a bloody beaker to thy lip.’
Again he sang; ‘Queen Meave to Uladh’s bound
Came down; and dark the deed that grew thereof;
Came down with all the hosting of her kings;
And dark the deed that grew thereof. We two
Abode with Scatha in her northern isle,
Her pupils twinned. The sea-girt warrioress
That honoured few men honoured us alike:
We ate together of the self-same dish:
We couched together ’neath the self-same shield:
Now living man I stand, and he lies dead!’
He raised again his head: once more he sang:
‘Each battle was a game, a jest, a sport
Till came, fore-doomed, Ferdīa to the Ford.
I loved the warrior though I pierced his heart.
Each battle was a game, a jest, a sport
Till stood, self-doomed, Ferdīa by the Ford.
Huge lion of the forestry of war;
Fair, central pillar of the House of Fame;
But yesterday he towered above the world:
This day he lies along the earth, a shade.’

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FRAGMENT IV.

_THE INVASION OF ULADH._

ARGUMENT.

Cuchullain lies long in the forest nigh to death from his wounds, and yet more through grief for Ferdīa. The queen crosses the Ford into Uladh, and captures the Donn Cuailgné. The confederate kings fall out among themselves; Meave summons a war council; whereupon there bursts forth a second contention between them and the Exile-Band. She makes the circuit of all Uladh; yet enacts nothing memorable. Lastly she marches against Eman, its metropolis, but slowly, being encumbered by her spoil. Uladh rouses itself daily out of its trance of imbecility. The death of Ketherne. Finobar is fain to draw Rochad to the cause of her mother, but fails. Her fate. The queen, falling into despondency, re-crosses the frontier.

Silence amid the wide, confederate camp:
No clang of sword or shield; no warrior’s tread
Striding to Meave with battle-gage down flung
For him who kept the Ford. But when six days
Were past, and none had seen that threatening helm,
There went abroad a rumour, ‘he is dead:’
Then sped to her six champions claiming fight:
Whom from her presence spurning, Meave advanced
With all her host o’er Uladh’s frontier line
By Daré’s castle and the ill-omened gate
Whereon high-seated Daré’s Fool had hurled
Against her scorn and gibe. As Meave drew near
Forth rolled the bellowing of Cuailgné’s Donn,
Cause of that war. King Daré’s sons had fled;
But in the gate-way stood their old, grey sire,
Alone, and slew the first that entrance made:
The rest dashed in upon him, and he died.
Six days, and in Cuchullain’s cell no change--
The bud grew large; the earlier violet died;
He neither spake nor moved. His wounds were deep:
Deeper his grief; and stronger thence their power
Though dead, that clan accursed of Cailitin,
With ghostly spells darkening the warrior’s heart:
As lie the dead, he lay.
One eve, what time
The setting sun levell’d through holly brakes
Unnumbered dagger-points of jewel’d light
And ’neath the oak-stem burned a golden spot,
Leagh, standing near his couch, reproached him thus;
‘In time of old the greatness of thy spirit
Had ever strength to salve thy corporal griefs:
But now through coward heart thou makest no fight,
Dying as old men die.’ Cuchullain heard;
But answered nought.
Next day, while near them buzzed
At noon the gilded insect swarm, he spake;
‘While lived Ferdīa wounds to thee were jest;
Thy grief it is that drags thee to the pit;
Grief; and for what? Of treasons worse is none
Than sorrow when thy country’s foe is dead!
Not man is he, the man who dies of grief.’
He spake: Cuchullain fixed a vacant eye
On that sad, wrathful face.
Then hastened Leagh
To where those giant coursers, side by side,
Stood tethered mid green grass and meadow-sweet
Within a lawn; and led them to a stream,
And bade them drink; and later led them home;
And placed their corn before them, and they ate:
Next spake he; ‘Horses ye; and yet ye know
To eat at need, while men self-sentenced starve!’
Thus of that man whom most he loved on earth
He made complaint. Liath, the lake’s white son,
Tossed high his head in anger. By his side
Sangland, his dusky comrade, sadly ate,
Moistening with tears her barley.
Late that eve
Cuchullain beckoned Leagh; ‘To Conor speed:
Speak thus; “Put on thine arms and save thy land
Since now the Hound that kept thy gate is dead:--
Make no delay!”’ At midnight Leagh went forth
Though loth to leave his master to the care
Of cowherd rude, or swineherd. Tenderer aid
Ere long consoled him. Beauteous as the dawn
Next morn two shepherd boys seeking a lamb
Came on the sick man in his forest nook;
Long time they gazed on him compassionate;
With voice benign and tendance angel-like
Onward into his confidence they crept;
His lips with milk, the purest, they refreshed;
They placed the dewy wood flowers in his hand;
They sang him ballads old, not battle-songs,
Too loud such songs they deemed, but Fairy lore,
Or tale of lovers fleeing tyrant’s rage:
Among the last unwittingly they sang
‘Cuchullain’s Wooing;’ how the youth had found
Eimer, the loveliest lady of the land
Within her bowery pleasaunce, girt with maids
Harping, or broidering fair in scarf deep-dyed
Blossom or insect: how he sued; and how
She answered; ‘Woo my sister: woo not me!’
How, glorying in her loveliness, her sire
Had sworn no chief should ever call her wife
Who won her not by valour; how that youth
Had scaled his rock and slain his guards and forth
Led her by hand, a downward-looking bride,
Majestic, unconsenting, undismayed,
But likewise unreluctant. As they sang
Above that suffering face there passed a smile;
And where that smile had lain there crept a tear;
And in few minutes more asleep he sank
Who had not slept nine days.
Swiftly meanwhile
On marched the host confederate: bootless speed;
Since ever one day’s progress by the next
Was cancelled; tortuous mind made tortuous course
Now bent awry to capture spoil, anon
To avenge some private wrong. Fergus the while
Inly with fury raged; for still his thought
Was ‘Eman--Vengeance.’ Meave, to calm his wrath,
Albeit debate she scorned, a council called
And made demand, ‘To Eman speed we, Kings,
With central wound striking at Uladh’s heart,
Or wind, as now, at random through the realm,
With havoc huge, and plunder?’
Rose a chief
Aulnau, the son of Magach, one whose pride
Was not in war-deeds but in crafty brain,
And thus made answer. ‘March to Eman! Queen!
Not difficult the emprise; but whose the gain?
Eman to burn, what were it but to sow
The sanguine seed of endless wars to come?
The Uladh chiefs live scattered. Eman’s fall
Touches not them. Their strength ere long revived
Southward in search of vengeance they will rush:
Slay them yet weakling! Slay them ere they wake!
Slay them in mountain hold and forest lair
In vale and glen: slay each apart, half-armed;
Easy the task!’ Arose the Exiled King:
‘“Easy the task!”’ he cried; ‘that Daré learned!
Unarmed--alone--I saw the old man fall!
“Easy the task!”’ Then brake upon him Alp
That ruled in far Iorras, speaking thus;
‘Fergus, we love our queen; but love not thee!
Hostile to ours thy race: King Conor’s fall
Thou seek’st; not Uladh’s. Hear me, Queen of Men!
The siege of Eman means a three months’ siege:
Be wary lest, ere yet that time is past
King Conor with his exiles makes a pact,
And they who now but rate thee drink thy blood:
Be wary likewise lest in half that time
Thy host melt from thee like a wreath of snow!
The Gael is restless; lives on chance and change;
The clan grows home-sick: victory in its grasp,
Pines for the babe unkissed, or field unreaped:
My counsel then is Aulnau’s. Like a flood
Wind devious through the land and strip it bare:
Till then let Eman be.’
Debate ere long,
For chiefs there were who loved the nobler war,
Passed on to raging storm. Old friendships died;
And from the dust of ages injuries old
Leaped up like warriors armed. In Fergus wrath
Gave way to scorn: with haughty port he spake,
A man majestical yet mirthful too.
‘Great Lords and Kings--since Kings ye claim to be--
King-vassals, world-renowned for mutual hate,
Alone of men I censure not your strifes,
Knowing their cause. The very air you breathe,
The founts whereof you drink, the soil you tread,
Are all impregnate with a sacred rage;
And false alike to usage, country, blood,
Were he among you who, for three hours’ space,
Discerned ’twixt friend and foeman. Lords and Kings,
Attend a legend from your annals old,
A laughing picture of man’s life this day.
In Erin’s earlier age there reigned two kings:
Each had a swineherd who, through magic power,
Assumed what form he would of shapes that live
In heaven, or earth, or sea. Friendship eterne
They pledged; then strove ten years, with hosts allied
So huge that none remained to till the land.
At last the vanquished westward creaked, a crane:
A crane, the victor chased him. Twenty years
High up they fought; to each side Erin’s birds
Flocking in clans, the factions of the heavens.
Those twenty years run out, the vanquished crane
Dropp’d on a stream and straight to salmon changed;
Instant his foe, to salmon turned not less,
From stream to sea pursued him. Far and wide
All scaly shapes that buffet Erin’s waves
From sprat and minnow up to shark and whale
Beat up in finny squadrons. Forty years
With deepening rage they fought, till round the isle
Main ocean boiled, and from her ships black-ribbed
Melted the tar, and mist was over all.
Next changed those salmons twain to dragon-flies:
But while they sat in hate on neighbouring pools
A dun cow and a red cow drank them up
Unwittingly. From them two bull-calves sprang
That, grown, with battle thunders dinned the realm
For eighty years! How say ye, Lords? From these
Come not the Bulls that shake this day our land,
Fionbannah, and the Donn? For them we fight,
And in their honour hold, on peaceful days,
Like them our roaring synods!’
Fiercely and long
The unwise council strove; and Meave, who feared
Far more the petulance of her lesser kings
Than that great exile’s loftier wrath, resumed
Next morn her march erratic. On she passed,
The Dal Araidhé forests on her right,
Northward to Moira’s plain and Clannaboy;
And through the Glynns of Ardes glimpsed remote
Alba’s blue hills. Dalríad fastnesses
She burned with fire, and seized full many a herd
On banks of Bann; then westward turned, and kenned
The grass-green glitter soon of far Lough Foyle,
And where the winding river-sea divides
Fanad from Inishowen’s cliffs forlorn.
Aileach she passed, more late the seat of kings;
And, southward next, that lake[34] whose lonely isle
Descends, through caves, to Spirit-worlds unknown.
Thus Meave a circle traced round Uladh’s realm,
And heard the murmur of its three great seas,
Yet nothing wrought of perdurable fame.
Conor, meantime, round Eman ranged his hosts
There flocking night and day. ‘I march not hence’
He said, ‘till Uladh’s wound is wholly healed;--
Fergus I deem the sage of battle-fields,
Though fool in all beside.’
But sloth and fear
In manly hearts at worst rare visitants,
Leave them betimes, like vermin caught by chance
That quit ere long the clean. O’er Uladh’s breadth
Daily some chief, or fragment of a clan
Long chilled by rumour of Cuchullain slain,
Despite King Conor’s hest assailed the queen
Marching, though late, on Eman. First of these
Was Ketherne. Hewing oaks on Fuad’s crest
He marked her host, and rushed, a naked man
From waist to head, his axe within his hand,
In fury on it. Late that eve his kernes
Forth from the battle tore him bleeding fast
From fifty wounds. That night physicians five
Were bending o’er his bed: the eldest spake;
‘Ketherne, thou son of Fintan, thou must die!’
Then Ketherne raised himself and with one blow
Smote him upon his forehead that he died.
In turn the second,--‘Ketherne, thou must die:’
And Ketherne slew him. Feebler-toned the third
Whispered, ‘The man must die;’ and died himself;
Likewise the fourth. Old Ithal was the fifth,
A son of Alba. He with stealthy foot
Stepping o’er corpses of his brethren slain,
Made keen-eyed inquest of the wounds; then spake:
‘Of these the least is dangerous: fatal none:
Two cures for such there be, diverse in kind;
Ketherne, thou son of Fintan, make thy choice!
The first is slow but certain: where thou liest
Full three months thou must lie; then rise restored:
The second is immediate: strength divine
It pours like light into a warrior’s veins;
Then dies its virtue, and the warrior dies!’
Ketherne laughed loud: ‘My choice is quickly made--
Three months bed-ridden, or one vengeance day
Joyous and glorious! Leech! I rather choose
With mine own hand to avenge eretime my death
Than trust that task to others!’ At his word
Ithal prepared a wonder-working bath
Strewn with strange herbs, and bathed therein the man,
Then bade him drink of some elixir bright
Drawn from the sun. As one refreshed by sleep
He rose: he clomb his war-car; sought the foe;
Threescore he slew, their best. At last the strength
Ceased from his arm; and opened once again
His wounds late closed; and back he sank, and died.
Such hindrances, and every day had such,
Likewise huge herds and cumber of her spoil
Slackened the march of Meave. Full many a chief
Perished in bootless fight; full many an eye
Turned on her, malcontent. But trial worse
Had found her through her daughter, Finobar.
Without an hour’s misgiving or remorse
In beauty’s pride not less than patriot zeal--
Wilier she was than Meave, and haughtier far--
Champion on champion she had sent to doom
Beside that fatal Ford. Ferdīa most
Had tasked the sorceress, for in him alone
Vanity kept no place. She watched the fight
No pallor on her fruit-like cheek, no cloud
Dimming her star-like eyes. Without a sigh
She saw the Firbolg, last of all his race,
Fall on the soil once theirs. Even then she knew not
The inevitable shaft had pierced whate’er
Of woman heart was hers. The strong man’s death
Lifted that veil his victory ne’er had raised:
Standing mid others she beheld him dead:
Thenceforth that deep-toned voice, that mournful front,
Those stern yet stately ways, so great and plain,
Haunted her memory. Oft with sudden spasm
She strove to shake that viper from her breast
Which sucked its life-blood. ‘I, the Princess, love!
And love a Firbolg!’ She had never loved:
Self-love, sole regent of the unloving heart,
Had barred it ’gainst all other tenderer loves:
In vain the island chiefs had wooed and sued:
She spurned them each and all.
Of these the last
Was Rochad, and the proudest, in the North
A vassal prince of Conor’s, oft his foe:
The passion she had kindled she had scorned:
Rochad had vowed revenge.
In wonder Meave
Noted the weary lids, the vanishing bloom,
The abrupt accost, though haught yet unassured;
The movements to mechanic changed, the mind
Still strong, yet widowed of its flexile strength;
These things she saw; their cause she ne’er divined:
Love for the living Meave could understand:
For her the dead was dead. To Finobar
The one thing yet remaining was her pride:
Questioned, her answer ever was the same,
‘Onward, to Eman!’
Nearer it each day
They drew. One evening through the sunset mist
A camp, high-seated on a bosky hill,
Shone out, fire-fringed: aloof it stood as one
That halts ’twixt war and peace. Ere long they learned
Rochad that site had chos’n, with Uladh’s King
Friendly but half, thence slow to prop his cause.
Then spake the queen; ‘The hand of yonder chief
Sustains our battle’s balance. If his host,
Now dubious, joins the bands that vex our flank
No choice remains but this, a homeward course
Or, if a march to Eman, then the loss
Of half our hard-earned spoil and hate thenceforth
Of all our vassal kings.’ Forth flashed the eyes
Of Finobar--it was their latest flash--
She answered thus; ‘The sequel leave to me!
He loved me, Rochad, once: ere sets yon moon
I bring you tamed the lion of yon hills,
Aye, in a silken leash!’
Rochad far off
Beheld her coming; marked it with a smile;
Welcomed her gaily; led her to the feast;
Thence to his tent wherein was none beside.
There put she forth whatever subtlest art
In seeming-simple innocence disguised
Imagines of persuasive, whatsoe’er
Delicatest craft of female witcheries
Potent for man’s destruction can devise,
To bend that warrior’s will. The winter beam
Thaws not the polar ice: o’er Rochad’s soul
So passed the syren’s pleadings. Pleased not less
To stand implored, he dallied with her suit
Destined, and this he knew, to end in shame.
She, self-deceived, inly made vow; ‘This tent
I leave not, save victorious.’
Hours went by:
She noted not their flight. Once more with skill
Plastic as wind in woods, a measured strength
Varying as minstrel’s hand that grazes now
Now sweeps the tenderer or the deeper strings,
To all the passions of the heart of man
Glory, Ambition, Love, Revenge, she tuned
The modulations of her passionate strain;
While half the richness theirs aforetime throbbed
Again in those sad accents, half their light--
For oft from out the present shines a past
Long dead--returned to eyes that, seen of none,
Had wept away their splendours. Calm he sat,
Sternly quiescent. Sudden on her broke
The fatal truth. She saw her power was gone;
And all that posthumous life late hers sank back
In embers lost and ashes. On the West
Rested her gaze. A cloud of raven black,
Its veil for half that night, had drifted by,
And o’er that distant gleam, her mother’s camp,
Slowly the moon descended. Finobar
That hour recalled her boast; ‘Ere sets yon moon
I bring you tamed the lion of yon hills,
Aye, in a silken leash!’
The Orient soon
Whitened with early dawn. Forlorn it lay
On hill and heath and plain and distant mere,
Forlorner on the haggard face--for oft
A face, still fair, in anguish antedates
Its future--of that woman as she knelt,
She knelt at last, low on that threshold low.
Then came the hour of Rochad’s great revenge:
Then first he answered plainly; ‘Finobar!
One day I knew you not: I know you now:
Your spells are null when once their trick is learned:
Likewise your face has lost its earlier charm.
Back to your mother! Say, ere sets yon sun
I join the king my master, from his gate
Repel with scorn the invader.’ Forth he passed
Without farewell. A clarion broke ere long
Her trance: adown the slope she saw his host
Winding t’ward Eman.
From a burning couch
She rose next eve; and, strong with fever’s strength,
Paced swiftly by that sunset-crimsoned stream
Which cut the camp in twain. Anon she marked
In all who met her, change inexplicable,
Strange eyes, strange faces, strange embarrassed ways:
Sadly compassionate that change in some:
In others questioning glance and meaning smile
Hinted at things that through her flaming heart
Passed like a sword of ice. Whisperings not less
There were, but these she heard not; ‘What! All night!
From eve to morn with Rochad in his tent!--
The men she fed on hopes she sent to death
Beside the Ford. Well! pride must have its fall!
Rochad is joined with Conor!’ Slanders worse
Some chiefs whom most her haughtiness had galled
Ventured, vain-glorious. Late one eve the truth
Sprang like a tigress on her. In his tent
She heard her father with her mother speak;
‘She yet may wear the crown: her maiden fame
Is lost forever!’
Three hours ere her death
Thus to her mother spake that sentenced one;
‘Noise it among the host that grief for those
Her countrymen--the Gael--who, near the Ford--
Ere yet that Firbolg shared the common fate,
Fell by Cuchullain, snapped her thread of life.
Bear on your march my body:--raise the cairn
On the first hill that kens Emania’s towers.’
So spake she; and the queen obeyed her hest:
She flung that rumour forth; and all who heard,
Heart-stricken now, believed it. But on Meave
A piercing sadness fell; and by her bed
Orloff her buried son stood up, and spake;
‘Home to thy native realm, and Cruachan!
Not less a battle waits thee great and dread
’Twixt Gairig and Ilgairig.’ One day’s march
Eastward still marched she; then upon a hill,
The first whose summit looked on Eman’s towers,
Interred the all-beauteous one with Pagan dirge,
And o’er her piled the cairn. Southward, next morn
She turned, and crossed the Ford. Fulfilled was thus
Cuchullain’s word, breathed o’er Ferdīa dead,
‘Finobar snared thee. Finobar shall die.’
But many a century later Uladh’s sons
Rose up and said; ‘Great scorn it is and wrong
Yon stranger’s grave should gaze on Eman’s towers:’
Then bore they forth those relics once so fair
With funeral rites revered and Pagan dirge,
And laid them by the loud-resounding sea,
And o’er them raised a cairn: and, age on age,
As sighed the sea-wind past it shepherds said
‘It whispers soft that sad word, Finobar!’

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FRAGMENT V.

_QUEEN MEAVE’S RETREAT._

ARGUMENT.

Queen Meave, having reached the sacred plain of Uta, sacrilegiously encamps thereon. A Druid denounces the late war as unrighteous, while Fergus contemns it as ineffectual; and immediately afterwards the Mor Reega manifests herself to the host. Next evening, while division of the spoil is being made, Meave is ware of the advance of King Conor; and Ailill transfers the supreme command to Fergus, who prepares for the attack. The battle is gloriously won by Fergus. That night Meave is warned by signs and omens; and Cuchullain, weak from his wounds, arrives in the Ulidian camp. From midnight to near sunset the next day he lies in a trance, during which fair spirits minister to him again his lost strength; and there is shown to him a vision of some mystic greatness reserved for Erin, yet of an order which he cannot understand. When the second battle is well nigh lost Cuchullain wakes; and Meave is driven in utter overthrow across the Shannon.