Pictish Mystic · Lore · Ulster Cycle
Baile and Aillinn: The Yew and the Apple Tree
From the Ulster Cycle comes a sad old tale: Baile the Sweet-Spoken, son of Búan.
Baile was Búan's only son, of the line of Rudraige. He was the beloved of Aillinn, daughter of Lugaid son of Fergus Fairge, and beloved of all who saw or heard him, for his novel stories.
The two made a tryst at Ros na Ríg, on the brink of the Boyne. Baile came from Emain Macha, over Slíab Fúaid and Muirtheimne, to Tráig Baile. There they unyoked their chariots, and sent their horses out to graze.
Then a horrible spectral man came from the south, darting like a hawk down a cliff, or wind from off the green sea. He said that Aillinn had been coming to meet Baile, till the youths of Leinster overtook her, and she was killed. For druids had foretold the two would not meet in life.
When Baile heard this, he fell dead without life. The Ultonians raised his tomb and his stone, and held his fair of lamentation. And a yew tree grew up through his grave, with the shape of Baile's head upon its top.
The same man went south to Aillinn, in her sunny chamber, and told her that Baile, royal heir of Ulster, had died coming to meet her. Aillinn fell dead without life. An apple tree grew through her grave, and in seven years it was a great tree, with the shape of her head upon its top.
Then poets cut down the yew, made a poet's tablet of it, and wrote in it the loves and courtships of Ulster. The courtships of Leinster were written on the apple tree.
At Samain, Art son of Conn held the two tablets face to face. Suddenly one sprang upon the other, and they became united like woodbine around a twig, and could not be parted. They were kept like a jewel at Tara, until it was burned by Dúnlang son of Énna.
A legend, not history.
Sources
- Scél Baili Binnbérlaig (Baile the Sweet-Spoken, Son of Búan), translated by Eugene O'Curry (Lectures on the Manuscript Materials of Ancient Irish History, 1861), on Mary Jones's Celtic Literature Collective: https://www.maryjones.us/ctexts/baile.html (condensed from the translation)
Story told by John.
These are legends from medieval manuscripts, not recorded history.
First shared on X @dalriada36963.
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