It so happened that King Conor and some of his warriors were feasting at the home of his chief storyteller, when their host’s wife gave birth to a girl. This was seen as cause for even more celebration, and the king’s seer, Cathbad, was called upon to prophesy the child’s future. The child, he said, would grow up to have exceptional physical qualities: curling golden hair, green eyes of great beauty, cheeks flushed like the foxglove, teeth white as pearls and a tall, perfectly shaped body.
So it was that Déirdre was reared by her nurse in a secluded part of the king’s palace, where no man, other than her tutor or the king, was permitted to set foot. As she grew up, her physical beauty proved to be everything that Cathbad had prophesied.
However, one day her tutor killed a young calf, and as it lay on the snow a raven came to drink the blood. Déirdre turned to her nurse and said, “The only man I could love would be one who should have those three colours, hair black as the raven, cheeks red as the blood, body white as the snow.” Her nurse revealed that there was such a young man living in Emain Macha — Naisi, one of the three sons of Usnach. So great was Déirdre’s desire to see this youth that she convinced her nurse to arrange a seemingly innocent encounter while he was out walking.
The young pair fell instantly in love, although Naisi was too mindful at first of incurring Conor’s wrath to want to get too involved. But the dictates of love, and Déirdre’s own pleadings, soon got the better of his fears, and one night the couple slipped away in the darkness, accompanied by Naisi’s two brothers. Realising that Conor would hunt the length and breadth of Ulster for the fugitives, the youthful party finally departed for Alba (Scotland).
However, Déirdre’s beauty attracted male attention once again, and the couple had to keep on the move, continually harassed by the men of Alba, until they managed to set up home in the beautiful Glen Etive.
As time passed many were those who counselled Conor to forgive the exiles their insult to him, saying it would be a tragedy for three sons of Ulster to die at the hand of enemies abroad. The aging king finally agreed to send messengers to bid them return home. These emissaries convinced Naisi and his brothers that all was forgiven and it was safe to return, though Déirdre remained disbelieving.
The group finally journeyed to Ulster, to be met by their good friend Fergus, one of the most respected warriors of the Red Branch. It was his promise to watch over them — and his threat to kill anyone who harmed them — that had finally helped persuade them to return. But Conor, by trickery, managed to divert Fergus from his task, and the party were entrusted to the protection of Fergus’ two sons. As the omens of evil gradually grew thicker, Déirdre’s premonition of treachery intensified.
“O Naisi, view the cloud
That I see here on the sky,
I see over Emania green
A chilling cloud of blood-tinged red”.
Upon their arrival at Emain Macha, instead of being admitted to the king’s own lodgings, they were accommodated in the House of the Red Branch, on the pretence that it was better stocked with food and drink for strangers. The party realised now that all was far from well.
Late that night Conor, still fired with his jealously, asked Déirdre’s old nurse to find out if her former charge still retained her great beauty. The nurse, after warning the young couple that Conor was a great threat to their safety, returned to the king and tried to convince him that time had indeed taken its toll of Déirdre’s looks, with much of her beauty now lost. This seemed to satisfy Conor for a while, but, being suspicious of the report, he sent another retainer to ascertain the truth. This spy finally found a chink in the barred windows and doors of the House of the Red Branch and observed the two lovers within. They in turn spotted him and angrily flung a chess piece which put out his eye. The injured man hurried back to Conor, telling the king that it was worth losing an eye to have beheld a woman so lovely.
Conor straightway gathered together a force of men and began an assault on the House of the Red Branch. By the dawn, although one of Fergus’ sons lay slain in his attempt to defend his charges, the three sons of Usnach were captured and beheaded. Déirdre’s lament over her lover’s dead body is one of the masterpieces of early Irish tragic verse, and was much rewritten by Irish scribes.
“Naisi is laid in his tomb.
sad was the protection that he got;
the nation by which he was reared poured out
the cup of poison by which he died.
His ruddy cheeks, more beautiful than meadows,
red lips, eyebrows of the colour of the chafer,
his teeth shining like pearls
like noble colour of snow.
Break not to-day my heart (O Conor!),
soon I shall reach my early grave,
stronger than the sea is my grief
dost thou not know it, O Conor?”
When Fergus heard of the treachery and Conor’s subsequent abduction of Déirdre, he and many other outraged Red Branch warriors fell upon Emain Macha and killed three hundred of those who remained loyal to Conor, as well as many women and members of Conor’s own family. Then they burned Emain Macha and departed into exile, a full three thousand of them. Taking up service with their former adversary, Queen Maeve of Connacht, they made continual raids upon their former homeland, killing and despoiling in revenge for the murder of the sons of Usnach.
As for Déirdre, she never smiled again, and Conor, finally tiring of this, in annoyance asked her what she hated most. To which question she named the king himself and one of his closest retainers. “Well then,” said the vindictive Conor, “I shall send you to his couch for a year.” As Conor rode out the next day, with Déirdre behind him in the chariot, she suddenly flung herself onto the ground, and dashing her head against a rock was instantly killed.
While these sagas are believed to describe an Ulster of the first few centuries AD, and probably had a long oral existence, they only took literary form in the eighth and ninth centuries. However, the development of Irish writing which made this flowering of culture possible was to be proceeded by the introduction into Ireland of a new and powerful force which was to have a fundamental impact on the Irish peoples and their history.
The ancient Annals of Ulster record two significant events, occurring one year apart:
In the year 431 from the Incarnation of the Lord, Palladius, ordained by Celestinus, bishop of the city of Rome, is sent, in the consulship of Etius and Valerius, into Ireland, first bishop to the Scots (Irish), that they might believe in Christ.”
“AD 432. Patrick arrived at Ireland, in the 9th year of the reign of Theodosius the younger, in the first year of the episcopate of Xistus, the 42nd bishop of the Church of Rome.”
While some historians continue to accept c 460 for Patrick’s death, most scholars of early Irish history tend to prefer a later date, c. 493. Supporting the later date, the annals record that in 553 “the relics of Patrick were placed sixty years after his death in a shrine by Colum Cille” (emphasis added).
Ireland’s period of ‘ancient’ history was now at an end — an new era was about to begin.