Page:Studies on the legend of the Holy Grail.djvu/259

Rh things worthy of him; she tests his wit as well as his courage, she makes him accept her conditions. In the great tragic tale of ancient Ireland, the Fate of the Sons of Usnech, Deirdre—born like Helen or Gudrun, to be a cause of strife among men, of sorrow and ruin to whomsoever she loves—Deirdre takes her fate into her own hands, and woos Noisi with outspoken passionate frankness. The whole story is conceived and told in a far more "romantic" strain than is the case with parallel stories from Norse tradition, the loves of Helgi and Sigrun, or those of Sigurd and Brunhild-Gudrun. And if the lament of Deirdre over her slain love lacks the grandeur and the intensity with which the Norse heroines bewail their dead lords, it has, on the other hand, an intimate, a personal touch we should hardly have looked for in an eleventh century Irish epic.

Another link between the Celtic sagas and the romances is