There shall be mischief yet afterwards
on thy account, O brightly shining woman,
hear thou this! at that time shall be
the exile of the three lofty sons of Usnach.
It is in thy time that a violent deed
shall be done thereupon in Emain,
yet afterwards shall it repent the violation
of the safeguard of the mighty son of Rog.
Do foesam is read in the last verse, combining the Leinster and the
Egerton texts.
It is through thee, O woman with excellence,
(is) the exile of Fergus from the Ulstermen,
and a deed from which weeping will come,
the wound of Fiachna, the son of Conor.
Fiachna. is grandson to Conor in the Book of Leinster account of the
battle. Fiacha is Conor's son in the Glenn Masain version.
It is thy fault, O woman with excellence,
the wound of Gerrc son of Illadan,
and a deed of no smaller importance,
the slaying of Eogan mac Durthacht.
There is no account of the slaying of Eogan in the Book of Leinster
version; and Eogan appears on the Hill of Slane in the Ulster army in
the War of Cualgne. The sequel to the Glenn Masain version, however,
describes Eogan's death at the hand of Fergus (Celtic Review, Jan.
1905, p. 227).
Thou shalt do a deed that is wild and hateful
for wrath against the king of noble Ulster;
thy little grave shall be in that place,
thy tale shall be renowned, O Deirdre.
PAGE 95
Line 13. "Release me, O my wife!" eirgg uaim a ben. It is suggested
that the vocative ben is "wife," not "woman." It occurs in seven other
places besides this in Windisch's Dictionary, and in six of these it
means wife (Emer is addressed as wife of Cuchulain in a deig-ben, in
"Sick-bed," 44). In the remaining case ("Fled Bricrend," 31) the word
is abbreviated, and stands b in the text, which might be for be, "O
lady," though we should have then expected the accent. I suggest that
Naisi, by giving to Deirdre the name of "wife," accepts her offer, for
no other sign of acceptance is indicated, and the subsequent action
shows that she is regarded as his wife afterwards.
Line 30. "Near to Ballyshannon," and "which men to-day call the
Mountain of Howth," are inserted as the modern names of the places.
The words correspond to nothing in the Irish.
PAGE 97
Line 13. "Fiacha." Fiacha, the son of Fergus, corresponds to Illan in
the better known version. There is no one in this version who
corresponds to the traitor son, Buinne.
PAGE 98
The "Lament of Deirdre," one of the finest of the older Irish poems,
has been rendered by Thurneysen and by others, among which should be
specially mentioned Miss Hull, in the Cuchullin Saga, pp. 50-51.
O'Curry's and O'Flanagan's versions seem to be very far from correct,
and it will be more convenient to give that literal translation which
seems nearest to the original, instead of indicating divergencies. The
literal translation adopted runs as follows:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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