Myths and Legends of the Celtic Race - Knowledge Rush

132 Myths and Legends of the Celtic Race[159]The king wooed her and made her his wife, and brought herback to Tara.The Love-Story of AilillIt happened that the king had a brother named Ailill, who, onseeing Etain, was so smitten with her beauty that he fell sick ofthe intensity of his passion and wasted almost to death. Whilehe was in this condition Eochy had to make a royal progressthrough Ireland. He left his brother—the cause of whose maladynone suspected—in Etain's care, bidding her do what she couldfor him, and, if he died, to bury him with due ceremonies anderect an Ogham stone above his grave. 125 Etain goes to visit thebrother; she inquires the cause of his illness; he speaks to her inenigmas, but at last, moved beyond control by her tenderness,he breaks out in an avowal of his passion. His description of theyearning of hopeless love is a lyric of extraordinary intensity. “Itis closer than the skin,” he cries, “it is like a battle with a spectre,it overwhelms like a flood, it is a weapon under the sea, it isa passion for an echo.” By “a weapon under the sea” the poetmeans that love is like one of the secret treasures of the fairy-folkin the kingdom of Mananan—as wonderful and as unattainable.Etain is now in some perplexity; but she decides, with a kindof naïve good-nature, that although she is not in the least inlove with Ailill, she cannot see a man die of longing for her,and she promises to be his. Possibly we are to understand herethat she was prompted by the fairy nature, ignorant of good andevil, and alive only to pleasure and to suffering. It must be said,however, that in the Irish myths in general this, as we may callit, “fairy” view of morality is the one generally prevalent bothamong Danaans and mortals—both alike strike one as morallyirresponsible.125 Ogham letters, which were composed of straight lines arranged in a certainorder about the axis formed by the edge of a squared pillar-stone, were usedfor sepulchral inscription and writing generally before the introduction of theRoman alphabet in Ireland.