The legend on which Deirdre is founded is, perhaps, the most famous of all Irish legends. The best version is that in Lady Gregory’s Cuchulain of Muirthemne, and is made up out of more than a dozen old texts.1 All these texts differ more or less, sometimes in essential things, and in arranging the story for the bounds of a one-act play, I have had to leave out many details, even some important persons, that are in all the old versions. I have selected certain things which seem to be characteristic of the tale as well as in themselves dramatic, and I have separated these from much that needed an epic form or a more elaborate treatment. Deirdre was the Irish Helen, and Naoise her Paris, and Concobar her Menelaus, and the events took place, according to the conventional chronology of the Bards, about the time of the birth of Christ.2 Concobar was High King of Ulster, and Naoise King of one of the subkingdoms, and the scene of the play is laid in a guest-house among woods in the neighbourhood of Armagh, where Concobar had his palace.3
Fergus, who in the old poems is a mixture of chivalry and folly, had been High King before Concobar, but had been tricked into abdicating in his favour. I have made no use of this abdication in my play, except that it helps to justify the popular influence I have attributed to him. I have introduced three wandering musicians, who are not in the legend, and Mr. Arthur Darley has written the music of their songs. The scenery has been designed by Mr. Robert Gregory.4