But is it just that deadly combination.. beauty and destruction-- that likes Maud to an other irish heros.. Deirdre of the sorrrows, in many ways Helen of troy is a much more passive character than any of the irish queens..

in the The Cattle-Raid of Cooley (Táin Bó Cúalnge) an old irish epic of war and blood shed-- at one point-- on the eve of a great battle, Queen Medb (Meave) of Connaught is brought news that her youngest son has died in one of the skirmishes.. her advisers are sure this news will cause her to reconsider and to call off the planned assault.-- but the queen replies-- "Well, when we started this, we knew it wasn't going to be like hunting larks" and she gets back to her plans for battle.(and this epic is about a war that started as boasting and bragging-pillow talk -- and hurt feelings..)

any reading of irish history will remind you that the irish have a bloody history-- and that the women of ireland have a reputation for steely determination.. my elder sister is named for deirdre-- who led all of ireland into civil war-- i am helen-- an other great woman who figures in an epic battle.. that yeats should have admired Maud (a variation of mebd/meave/mavish) and likened her to helen, is no surprize. certainly the irish have seen there wars as epics no less important than the iliad.. even if the rest of world doesn't (hasn't).


my other obsession