Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 15, 1904.djvu/48

34 picking up information useful for the royal ears. We read that "everything good or evil that was done in Ireland she used to relate to the king in the House of the Red Branch at the end of the day." When Conor was shut up during the famous Siege of Howth on the rocky heights of the peninsula, and unable to obtain a supply of provisions, he was sustained by a daily supply of food brought by Levarcham on her back all the way from the royal palace of Emain Macha (i.e. Navan Fort, near Armagh). When undergoing these prodigious feats a fearful and horrible change came over the swift messenger. We read that "her feet and knees turned and went behind her, and her heels and thighs came before her!" while, besides her ordinary share of food with the warriors, she required a portion of 60 cakes which she baked at one time on the fire. Though only the child of a slave-girl and born in Conor's house, Levarcham was possessed of all the arts of druidism. She was that most dreaded being, a female satirist. Even the king stood in awe of her, for we read that he would like to have removed her from the vicinity of Deirdre, but he dare not, for he dreaded her incantations.

So radically dissimilar are the maiden Deirdre and her nurse Levarcham in the story of the 11th and that of the