Deirdre of the Sorrows

At a Glance

• Central figures: Deirdre, whose beauty was prophesied to bring ruin to Ulster; Naoise, eldest of the three sons of Uisneach; and Conchobar mac Nessa, king of Ulster, who claimed Deirdre before she was born.
• Setting: Ulster and Alba (Scotland), in the time of the Red Branch knights at Emain Macha, Conchobar’s royal seat.
• The turn: Deirdre laid a geis on Naoise to take her away, and the three sons of Uisneach fled with her to Alba rather than let Conchobar have her.
• The outcome: Conchobar lured them back with false promises of safety; Naoise and his brothers were killed by treachery, and Deirdre took her own life rather than live under the king’s hand.
• The legacy: Fergus mac Roich and his warband, betrayed by Conchobar’s broken oath, defected to Connacht - a defection that made the Táin Bó Cúailnge possible.

Cathbad the druid was at the feast when the child screamed from the womb. Not a birth-cry. Something else. Cathbad went still, and the hall went still around him, and then he spoke: the girl being born that night would be the most beautiful woman in Ireland, and because of her beauty the sons of Ulster would kill each other, and the province would bleed for a generation.

The warriors wanted the child killed. Conchobar mac Nessa, king of Ulster, refused. He would raise her himself, hidden away, and when she came of age he would take her as his wife. He gave the infant a name: Deirdre. Then he sent her away from Emain Macha to be fostered in a house in the hills, with only a nurse and a tutor named Leborcham for company, and no man was to look on her face until the king was ready.

The Blood on the Snow

Deirdre grew up in the hill-house with no knowledge of young men. She knew the nurse and she knew Leborcham, who was sharp-tongued and clever, and she knew the hills around the house, and that was all.

One winter morning a calf was slaughtered outside her window. A raven came down to drink the blood where it pooled on the snow. Deirdre stood watching - the black bird, the red blood, the white ground - and said to Leborcham that she could love a man with those three colors: hair like the raven, cheeks like blood, skin like snow.

Leborcham was quiet a moment. Then she told Deirdre that such a man existed. His name was Naoise, son of Uisneach, and he was a warrior of the Red Branch at Emain Macha.

Naoise on the Rampart

Deirdre found a way out. She went to the ramparts of Emain Macha at dusk, where Naoise walked with his two brothers, Ainnle and Ardan. She put herself in his path.

Naoise knew who she was. Everyone at Emain Macha knew who was being kept in the hill-house and for what purpose. He tried to pass her. She seized him by the ears - both hands, hard - and said the words:

Two ears of shame and mockery on you, Naoise, unless you take me away from here.

It was a geis, a binding. Naoise could not refuse without losing his honor entirely. He looked at her and understood what Cathbad had prophesied. He took her anyway.

That night Naoise and his brothers, Ainnle and Ardan, left Ulster with Deirdre. They went north and then across the sea to Alba, and for years they lived in the wild places there, moving from camp to camp, hunting, building shelters that they abandoned before the king of Alba’s men could find them. The three sons of Uisneach were formidable enough that no local lord could easily take them. They survived.

The King’s Messenger

Conchobar did not forget. He waited, and then he sent word to the sons of Uisneach: come home. All is forgiven. I will send Fergus mac Roich himself as surety for your safety.

Fergus was the former king of Ulster, a man whose word was iron. He agreed to stand guarantor. He crossed the sea and found the exiles in Alba and told them the king’s terms.

Naoise wanted to go. He missed Ireland. Deirdre did not want to go. She had dreamed three birds carrying three drops of honey in their beaks, and the honey turned to blood. She told Naoise what the dream meant. He went anyway. The brothers trusted Fergus. Deirdre sailed with them because there was nowhere else to go.

When they reached the coast of Ulster, Conchobar’s trap began to close. He sent invitations to Fergus - a feast here, a feast there - and Fergus was bound by geis never to refuse a feast. One by one the invitations pulled Fergus away from the sons of Uisneach, so that he was not with them when they reached Emain Macha.

The Red Branch Hall

The sons of Uisneach were given the Red Branch hall at Emain Macha to rest in. That night Conchobar sent a woman to the hall to look through the window and tell him whether Deirdre was still beautiful enough to be worth the trouble.

The woman was seen. Naoise put out her eye with a hurled chess-piece. It did not matter. She had seen enough to report back.

Conchobar sent his men. The fighting around the Red Branch hall was savage and brief. The three sons of Uisneach held the doorway for a time, but they were outnumbered and the king had prepared. Conchobar ordered Eogan mac Durthacht to do the killing. Eogan drove his spear through Naoise’s back. Ainnle and Ardan fell beside him.

Deirdre was taken alive.

The Year and the Stone

Conchobar kept Deirdre at Emain Macha. For a year she did not smile, did not raise her head, did not sleep fully. Conchobar watched her with the attention of a man who has paid a great deal for something and means to use it. She gave him nothing.

One day, in cruelty or frustration, the king asked her what she hated most in the world. She told him: Conchobar himself and Eogan mac Durthacht, the man who had killed Naoise.

Then you will spend a year with Eogan, Conchobar said.

They put her in a chariot between the two men - Conchobar on one side, Eogan on the other. Deirdre looked at them. She said she was a sheep between two rams. Then she threw herself from the chariot and broke her head against a stone.

Where her blood fell, some say a yew tree grew, and from the place where Naoise was buried another yew grew, and the two trees bent toward each other until their branches intertwined and could not be separated.

Fergus mac Roich, learning what Conchobar had done, burned Emain Macha and took three thousand fighting men west to Connacht, to the court of Ailill and Medb. When Medb marched east to steal the Brown Bull of Cúailnge, Fergus and his warband marched with her. The ruin Cathbad had seen at Deirdre’s birth was only beginning.