# The North Star/Chapter 4

IV GYDA
Nine hundred years ago, in the closing decade of the tenth century, there was a great fair held in the city of Dublin. This gathering was one of more than usual interest, and held an attraction to the throngs assembled, like the concluding chapters of a romance. For it was reported, far and near, that on the fifth day of the fair, the Princess Gyda, the famous Irish beauty, would choose a husband from among the hundreds of suitors who sought her hand. Her brother, King Kavaran, had despatched couriers to all the provinces to invite the eligible young nobles to be present at the fair Gyda’s decision. Not one who could come had absented himself; and in the heart of each and every one was the hope that the choice of the princess might fall upon him. Even those who had never looked into her blue eyes had heard of her charms. The bards had been stringing their harps in her praise, in every castle, from sea to sea.
The Princess Gyda was a widow. Since her first smile after her grief for the late earl, her husband, there had arisen a great competition as to who should be his successor. A hundred acknowledged suitors ​she had; but on this day, the number was doubled and trebled by the acquisition of every hopeful young chieftain whose heart had been fired by the fame of King Kavaran’s sister.
All along the highways leading to the city could be seen groups of horsemen. Here a young chieftain would ride, with his father, escorted by the bard and the physician, two inseparable adjuncts to the dignity of every Celtic clan. After these followed the retainers. The bard’s office was very evident, as the sound of his harp was heard whenever the groups stopped to rest by the wayside; but did we not know that the physician was the constant attendant upon every enterprise of an Irish chieftain, we might suppose that his mission in this case would be to heal the wounds inflicted by the blue eyes of the princess.
On this beautiful May morning in the year A.D. 990, along the sloping roads that wind down from the hills of Wicklow to the plains of the Liffey, between the hawthorn hedges, came a particularly attractive group of travellers. A venerable chieftain sat at the head of the cavalcade. At his right hand rode his young son. They were Fergus and Eogan O’Niall, coming from their own province of Munster to be present at the fair. The white-haired man of seventy years sat his steed with almost the same grace as he did fifty years before, when he rode to meet the Danes in battle, or the Leinster chiefs when they encroached too closely upon his territory. The youth was in the ​full bloom of early manhood. He wore the collar of gold that proclaimed him an Irish knight, and his shield, painted in vivid red, gave him the name by which he was praised for his valor by the bards throughout the Island, “O’Niall of the Red Shield.” The seven colors in the costume of father and son declare them of the royal blood; and the last Munster king knew no stronger arm than that of his kinsman, Fergus O’Niall, even as the reigning king had no braver shield than the red sign of Eogan, the bravest of his “Knights of the Red Wreath.”
Lurgha, the harper, had been singing of the beauty of the Princess Gyda, and when the song ceased, Fergus O’Niall turned to the young man. “My son, dost thou still hope to win this princess in the contest to-morrow?”
“I know not, my father; but all that a knight may do for the fair Gyda, will I strive to do.”
“Didst thou not hear that the giant Alfwine, he that is called the ‘Man-slayer,’ hath declared that if Gyda’s choice fall upon any other than himself, the chosen one must do single combat with him? There are few men can withstand Alfwine.”
“I may not withstand him; but I would defend my right with my life, if the fair princess should choose me.”
“I would thy life went in a better cause, my son. None hold women in higher honor than the clan ​O’Niall; but their smiles are dangerous lights to young warriors. Dost thou not remember the tale that Lurgha hath sung to thee, of how thy forefather, Cealchan, the bravest young chieftain of his day, was entrapped and betrayed by the wiles of a Danish maiden? Dost thou not remember”—his temper rising at the recollection—“that this same maiden’s favor cost Cealchan such degradation as rarely an Irish knight hath been called upon to endure? When he ventured too near to win the Danish maiden, she betrayed him to her countrymen in Dublin. Ah! he was a brave youth, thy kinsman Cealchan, but his promise was blighted for a maiden’s smile!”
“Blighted, my father?” exclaimed the young man, with the reckless energy of five and twenty, and the fervor of a sentiment that last year’s gazing into Gyda’s blue eyes had awakened. “Was there ever a nobler fight than our Munster chieftains fought to rescue Cealchan from the ship of the Danes? The sight of him lashed to the mast before their eyes gave such strength to their arms that the Danes could not withstand them, even had they been led, as they say they are, by their war god, Odin. And did not a woman, our own Irish princess, through the wife of Sitric the Dane, did she not, my father, warn Cealchan and seek to rescue him?”
“True! true!” replied the older man, and was unwilling to argue further.
They were entering the city. Crossing the River ​Liffey, they slowly walked their horses up the street to the house of a Leinster chieftain, a former combatant in battle, but now the most cordial of hosts in giving the hospitality of his home to the Munster prince and his son.