It was a fortunate, if not an inevitable, event, in view of his
temperamental affiliations with the Celtic genius, that MacDowell
should have been made aware of the suitability for musical treatment
of the ancient heroic chronicles of the Gaels, and that he should
have gone for his inspiration, in particular, to the legends
comprised in the famous Cycle of the Red Branch: that wonderful group
of epics which comprises, among other tales, the story of the
matchless Deirdré,--whose loveliness was such, so say the
chroniclers, that "not upon the ridge of earth was there a woman so
beautiful,"--and the life and adventures and glorious death of the
incomparable Cuchullin. These two kindred legends MacDowell has
welded into a coherent and satisfying whole; and in a verse with
which he prefixes the sonata, he gives this index to its poetic
content:

"Who minds now Keltic tales of yore,
Dark Druid rhymes that thrall;
Deirdré's song, and wizard lore
Of great Cuchullin's fall."

At the time of the publication of the sonata he wrote to me as
follows concerning it:

"... Here is the sonata, which it is a pleasure to me to offer you
as a token of sympathy. I enclose also some lines [of his own
verse] anent Cuchullin, which, however, do not entirely fit the
music, and which I hope to use in another musical form. They may
serve, however, to aid the understanding of the _stimmung_ of
the sonata. Cuchullin's story is in touch with the Deirdré-Naesi