Neither of these stories, however, has as yet attained the fame of one now to be retold.[219] To many, no doubt, Gaelic romance is summed up in the one word Deirdre. It is the legend of this Gaelic Helen that the poets of the modern Celtic school most love to elaborate, while old men still tell it round the peat-fires of Ireland and the Highlands. Scholar and peasant alike combine to preserve a tradition no one knows how many hundred years old, for it was written down in the twelfth-century Book of Leinster as one of the “prime stories” which every bard was bound to be able to recite. It takes rank with the “Fate of the Sons of Tuirenn”, and with the “Fate of the Children of Lêr”, as one of the “Three Sorrowful Stories of Erin”. So favourite a tale has naturally been much altered and added to in its passage down the generations. But its essential story is as follows:— King Conchobar of Ulster was holding festival in the house of one of his bards, called Fedlimid, when Fedlimid’s wife gave birth to a daughter, concerning whom Cathbad the Druid uttered a prophecy. He foretold that the new-born child would grow up to be the most lovely woman the world had ever seen, but that her beauty would bring death to many heroes, and much peril and sorrow to Ulster. On hearing this, the Red Branch warriors demanded that she should be killed, but Conchobar refused, and gave the infant to a trusted serving-woman, to be hidden in a secret place in the solitude of the mountains, until she was of an age to be his own wife. So Deirdre (as Cathbad named her) was taken away to a hut so remote from the paths of men that none knew of it save Conchobar. Here she was brought up by a nurse, a fosterer, and a teacher, and saw no other living creatures save the beasts and birds of the hills. Nevertheless, woman-like, she aspired to be loved. One day, her fosterer was killing a calf for their food, and its blood ran out upon the snowy ground, which brought a black raven swooping to the spot. “If there were a man,” said Deirdre, “who had hair of the blackness of that raven, skin of the whiteness of the snow, and cheeks as red as the calf’s blood, that is the man whom I would wish to marry me.” “Indeed there is such a man,” replied her teacher thoughtlessly. “Naoise[220], one of the sons of Usnach[221], heroes of the same race as Conchobar the King.” The curious Deirdre prevailed upon her teacher to bring Naoise to speak with her. When they met she made good use of her time, for she offered Naoise her love, and begged him to take her away from King Conchobar. Naoise, bewitched by her beauty, consented. Accompanied by his two brothers, Ardan and Ainle, and their followers, he fled with Deirdre to Alba, where they made alliance with one of its kings, and wandered over the land, living by following the deer, and by helping the king in his battles.