Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 15, 1904.djvu/45

Rh and woe is me, for unless my desire is given to me, I shall not live.' 'Alas for thy desire, it is difficult to obtain it,' said Levarcham, 'for fast and close is the fort of the (Red) Branch, and high and difficult the enclosure round about, and within are the fierce bloodhounds keeping watch.' 'The hounds will not harm us,' said Deirdre. 'Where did you behold that face?' said Levarcham again. 'In a dream yesterday,' said Deirdre weeping; and she hid her face in the bosom of her nurse, shedding tears plentifully. Her nurse lifted up Deirdre's head. 'Take courage, daughter,' she said, 'and be patient, and surely thou wilt get thy desire; for according to the span of human life, Conor's time beside thee cannot be long.' Levarcham then departs, but as she is crossing a passage she notices a green mantle hung loosely across a closed-up window, and putting her hand to it it came readily away, the moss and stones falling down after it; and beyond, through the gap, might be seen the Plain of the Champions, and the heroes exercising themselves on it in games and feats of strength. A new light breaks in on Levarcham's mind. 'I understand now, my pupil,' she thinks, 'where you saw that dream.

Some little time after she goes back to look for Deirdre, and finds her lying on her couch, crying and making moan. The heart of the old nurse is softened at the sight, and bending over her, she bids her tell her whether she had ever before seen the warrior whom she had been shown yesterday in the dream, or whom she had perhaps seen through the hole bored in the window-work? Then Deirdre hiding her face against her nurse's shoulder, tells her under promise of secrecy a pretty childish romance. She said that once when she was but a little girl, she had seen him on the lawn of the royal residence, playing games with the other boys, and learning feats of championship, and that even then he had already been beautiful to look upon.

"Daughter," said Levarcham, "it is full seven years since you saw the boys playing on the green, and then you were