Deirdre he has realised exquisitely in his middle movement: that is her image, in all its fragrant loveliness.

MacDowell has limned her musically in a manner worthy of comparison with the sumptuous pen-portrait of her in Standish O'Grady's "Cuculain": "a woman of wondrous beauty, bright gold her hair, eyes piercing and splendid, tongue full of sweet sounds, her countenance like the colour of snow blended with crimson." In the close of the last movement we are justified in seeing a translation of the sublime tradition of Cuchullin's death.

This it is which furnished MacDowell with the theme that he celebrates in the lines of verse which I have quoted above.

I believe that he was planning an orchestral setting of this scene; and that, had he lived, we should have had from him a symphonic poem, "Cuchullin." The manner of the hero's death is thus described by Standish O'Grady: "Cuculain sprang forth, but as he sprang, Lewy MacConroi pierced him through the bowels.

Then fell the great hero of the Gael.