Ossian Collection > Heroic and Ossianic literature

mythological cycle. Nt)w we pass over close on 1700 years, for
all of which, however, Iiish history finds kings and minute details
of genealogies. A few years before our era there was a Queen
over Connaught named Meave (Medb), whose consort and
husband was Ailill. He was a weak and foolish man, and
she was a masterful woman, very beautiful, but not very
good. Some tales make her half divine — that a fairy or
Sid6 was her mother. This Ailill was her third husband.
She had been married to Conchobar Mac Nessa, King of
Ulster, but they mutually divorced each other The reign
and rule of Conchobar is the golden age of Irish romance ;
it is in fact the "Cuchulinn" cycle. It was in his reign, that
the third of the SoiTowful Tales of Erin was enacted. The first
concerned the children of Lir, a prince of the Tuatha-De, whose
children were enchanted by their stej^motlier, and became swans,
suffering untold woes for ages, until their spells were broken
under Christian dispensation. The second sorrowful tale had, as
its theme, the children of Turenn, whom Luga, prince of the Tua-
tha-De, the sun god, persecuted and made to undei-go all sorts of
toils and dangers. The third tale concerns the reign of Concho-
bar, not the age of the gods. The subject of it is the woes of
Deirdre, well known in both Scotland and Ireland. Deirdre was
daughter of the bard Feidlimid, and, shortly before her birth, the
Druid Cathbad prophesied that she should be the cause of woes
unnumbered to Ulster. The warriors were for killing her, but
Conchobar decided to bring her u]) to be his own wife, and
evade the prophecy. She was kept apart in a lis (fortress),
where slie could not see a man until she should wed Concho-
bar. Her tutor and uurse alone saw her. The tutor was one
day killing a calf in the snow, and a raven came, and was
drinking the blood of the calf Deirdre said to her nurse that she
would like to have the man who would have the " three colours
yonder on him ; namely, his hair like the raven, his cheek like the
blood, and his body like the snow." The nurse told her such a
person was near enough — Nois, the son Uisnech. There were
three brothers of them, Nois, Ardan, and Ainle, and they sang so
sweetly that every human being who heard them wei'e enchanted,
and the cattle gave two-thirds additional milk. They were fleet
as hounds in the chase, and the three together could defy a
province. Deirdre managed to meet Nois and boldly proposed to
him to fly with her. He refused at first, but she prevailed. He,
his brothers, and their com])any fled with her. After wandering
round all Erin, they were forced to come to Alba. They made