“Nay, it is nothing.  Have peace and joy while thou canst, sweet Deirdre.  Thus I lay my wand upon thy bosom and enjoin peace!”

“Thou art weary, dear foster-mother.  Rest thee here now a little space, while I go and gather forest flowers.  They are sweeter than those that grow in my garden.  O, right glad am I to be alone in the forest, relieved from the observation of those grim-visaged sentinels, to stray solitary in the dim mysterious forest, and to think my own thoughts there, and dream my dreams, and recall that vision which I have seen.  O Naysi, son of Usna, sweeter than harps is the mere sound of thy name, O Ultonian!”

Deirdre after that went forward alone into the forest.

Naysi, when he had started back into the forest stood still for a long time in his retreat.  It was the hollow of a tall rock beside a falling stream of water, all flowing snow or transparent crystal.  Holly trees and quicken trees grew from its crest, and long twines of ivy fell down before like green torrents.  Behind them he concealed himself, when he heard the cries and the challengings and the baying of the hounds.  Then he saw the maiden come along the forest glade by the margent of the stream, her basket filled and over-flowing with flowers.  The sentient stream sang loud and gay to greet her approaching, with fluent liquid fingers striking more joyously the chords of his stony lyre.  Light beyond the sun was shed through the glen before her.  Birds, the brightest of plumage and sweetest of note of all the birds of Banba, [Footnote:  One of Ireland’s ancient names.] filled the air with their songs, flying behind her and before her, and on her right hand and on her left.  Through his lattice of trailing ivy the son of Usna saw her.  Her countenance was purer and clearer than morning-dew upon the rose or the lily, and the rose and lily, nay, the whiteness of the snow of one night and the redness of the reddest rose, were there.  Her eyes were blue-black under eyebrows black and fine, but her clustering hair was bright gold, more shining than the gold which boils over the edge of the refiner’s crucible.  Her forehead was free from all harshness, broad and intelligent, her beautiful smiling lips of the colour of the berries of the mountain ash, her teeth a shower of lustrous pearls.  Her face and form, her limbs, hands and feet, were such that no defect, blemish or disproportion could be observed, though one might watch and observe long, seeking to discover them.  In that daughter of the High Poet and Historian of the Hound-race of the North, [Footnote:  The hound was the type of valour.  Though Cuculain was pre-eminently the Hound, the Gaelic equivalents of this word will be discovered in most of the famous names of the cycle.] child of valour and true wisdom, the body did not predominate over the spirit, or the spirit over the body, for as her form was of matchless, incomparable, and inexpressible beauty, so her mind was not a whit