“It is at least,” replied she, “the most ancient ornament we know here--for we are told that the celebrated palace of Emania, * erected previous to the Christian era, was sketched by the famous Irish Empress Macha, with the bodkin.
* The resident palace of the Kings of Ulster, of which Colgan speaks as “rendolens splendorum.”
“I remember a passage from a curious and ancient romance in the Irish language, that fastened wonderfully upon my imagination when I read it to my father in my childhood, and which gives to the bodkin a very early origin:--it ran thus, and is called the ‘_Interview between Fionn M’Cnmhal and Cannan_.’
“‘Cannan, when he said this, was seated at table; on his right hand was seated his wife, and upon his left his beautiful daughter, so exceedingly fair, that the snow driven by the winter storms surpassed not her in fairness, and her cheeks wore the blood of a young calf; her hair hung in curling ringlets, and her teeth were like pearl--a spacious veil hung from her lovely head down her delicate form, and the veil was fastened by a goldenbodkin.’” “The bodkin, you know, is also an ancient Greek ornament, and mentioned by Vulcan, as among the trinkets he was obliged to forge.”
By the time she had finished this curious quotation in favour of the antiquity of her dress, her harp was tuned, and she began another exquisite old Irish air called the “Dream of the Young Man,” which she accompanied rather by a plaintive _murmur_, than with her voice’s full melodious powers. It is thus this creature winds round the heart, while she enlightens the mind, and entrances the senses.
I had finished the sketch in the meantime, and just beneath the figure, and above her flattering inscription of my name, I wrote with my pencil,
“’Twas thus Apelles bask’d in beauty’s blaze,
Nor felt the danger of the steadfast gaze;”
while she, a few minutes after, with that restlessness that seemed to govern all her actions to-day arose, put her harp aside and approached me with, “Well, Mr. Mortimer, you are very indulgent to my insufferable indolence--let me see what you have done for me;” and looking over my shoulder, she beheld not the ruins of her castle, but a striking likeness of her blooming self; and sending her head close to the paper, read the lines, and that name honoured by the inscription of her own fair hand.