between the two worlds of service to his female partner and loyalty to
the king. The two worlds come into collision and the world of
masculine solidarity wins. As Conchubhar warns: ëthe great want that
we have, to wit, that the three lights of Valour of the Gael, the three
sons of Usnach, Naoise, Ainle and Aidan should be separated from us
on account of any woman in the world.í^32 Reynolds notices how here
we have the masculine society of the boys objecting to the disruption
of any woman in the world. The myth of Deidre and Naoise
demonstrates the powers of patriarchy whereby Deidreís advice is
ignored and as a result, the sons of Usnach and Deidre go to their
graves. It is noticeable that a myth about a woman whose voice is
ignored should haunt Bolandís poem.
Whereas Ceres was positioned in no time in ëStoryí the
legendary couple remain unlocated in a ënowhere which is anywhere.í
The myth depends on them to be abstract figures who are young and
beautiful: they do not have scars, neither do they have any sense of
individuality. They are like Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden who
live in a utopian space and eternal time, and beyond secular notions of
time and space. According to the story, the couple can only be safe if
they pretend that the archetypal young, slender and red-haired Irish
woman has grown old. Images of an ëocean-coloured peaceí and the
mystical wood enhance the sense of a stereotypical pastoral and
mysterious Irish landscape.
However, ëthe light changesí as does the landscape as it becomes
less generalized and takes on the more specific details of a localized
time and place. The poem shifts into spring in the garden of a Dublin
suburb. The experience of the poetic speaker is inserted into the poem
and she is depicted writing at a table. The place is not mystical and the
female figure is not a young idealized woman, although there is a
degree of idealization in the portrait of the writer pictured at her
desk.^33 The story of this woman is hard to tell and rather like the
32 Lorna Reynolds, ëWomen in Irish Legend, Life and Literatureí, Women in Irish
Legend, Life and Literature, ed., S.F. Gallagher (Irish Literary Studies 14)
(Gerrards Cross, Bucks: Colin Smythe, 1983), p.14. Taken from The Sons of
Usnach. No details of edition or page number are provided by Reynolds.
33 This is evocative of the famous picture of Seamus Heaney depicted writing at a
table in 1974 by Edward McGuire (1932ñ86). Held at the National Gallery of
Ireland, Dublin.