Page:Celtic Stories by Edward Thomas.djvu/57

 dom of the mountains, the forests, and the great waters amongst them. They slept upon forest beds of brushwood, mosses and new rushes. The stags did not know the mountains, nor the cormorants know the sea, better than they. The sons of Usna forgot the palaces of Navan. Deirdre forgot her cage in the forest among the mountains. Conachoor was no more to them than a man in a story that is both dull and untrue.

But Conachoor could not and would not forget Deirdre, though he would willingly have forgotten the sons of Usna. They were to him more real than people in the tales that are like life when it is most alive. They were as true and living as the dreams that draw sweat from every inch of a man's body. When he thought of Deirdre with love, and of those brothers with hate, nothing else was real except the one fair face and the three dark faces of those distant ones; and all the royal apartments of bronze and red yew-tree wood were as dreamy before his eyes as they are before ours to-day. There were times when Navan was like a stupid dream that makes a man ashamed and is soon forgotten, and he would have rejoiced to let his capital and the House of the Red Branch and all the heroes pass away like a dream of this kind, if Deirdre or even Naisi would have come and stood in the flesh before his eyes and within his reach. Nevertheless Conachoor continued to rule at Navan. In spite of love and in spite of hate, he was very wise. Neither alone nor with an army had he crossed the sea in pursuit of the lovers. He had heard men singing songs of the beauty of Deirdre and the great deeds of Naisi, and he had not stirred. At last, after many years, he held a great feast for the nobles and princes and tributary kings of the land. Then, when they had eaten what makes men content and drunk what