Page:Celtic Stories by Edward Thomas.djvu/52



the times before history Conachoor was one of the great kings of Ireland. He ruled Ulster from his capital of Navan, where he had three palaces. The greatest of these three was the House of the Red Branch. Conachoor's warriors were called the heroes of the Red Branch, and great as the king was in himself, he was greater because the most famous heroes were among his captains, and the sweetest bards and the most powerful druids were his.

One day while Conachoor was feasting at Felim the bard's house, the wife of the bard gave birth to a daughter, and immediately the druid Cathbad made a prophecy. He said that this child, Deirdre, would grow into the loveliest of all women, and her loveliness would bring death to heroes and grief and calamity to the land. The heroes of the Red Branch wished to prevent what had to be by destroying the child; even Felim the bard was willing that she should die. But Conachoor thought to make Deirdre his wife, and her life was spared and she was taken away to a solitary place hidden among the forests of the mountains. It was known only to the deer, the hare and the falcon, and to Conachoor, and those who tended her and told her stories of magnificent and of strange things—the strangest and most magnificent that were told in the days before Deirdre herself was in a tale. Sometimes the king came and looked at the child. To her he was nothing but a king; she did not know that he who had created the solitude about her was also a man. Only Conachoor hunted in the sur-