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The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Divine Adventure etc. (Works vol. 4), by
Fiona Macleod
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Title: The Divine Adventure etc. (Works vol. 4)
Author: Fiona Macleod
Release Date: September 3, 2011 [EBook #37293]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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<div class='tnote'><h3>Transcriber's Notes:</h3>
<p>Obvious punctuation errors repaired.</p>
<p>The author's spelling has been kept.</p>
<p>Some advertisements for other books published by William
Heinemann were moved from the start (before the title) to the
end of the text (after the Bibliographical Note).</p>
<p>The remaining corrections made are indicated by dotted lines under the corrections.
Scroll the mouse over the word and the Transcriber's Note will <ins title="like this">appear</ins>.</p></div>
<h1>The Works of</h1>
<h1>"FIONA MACLEOD"</h1>
<hr />
<h3><i>UNIFORM EDITION</i></h3>
<hr />
<h3>ARRANGED BY</h3>
<h2>MRS. WILLIAM SHARP</h2>
<h3><br />VOLUME IV</h3>
<div class="center"><br />
<i>The Gods approve the depth and not the tumult of<br />
<span style="margin-left: -11em;">the soul.</span><br />
<br />
It is loveliness I seek, not lovely things.</i></div>
<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;"><br />
<img src="images/frontispiece.jpg" width="500" height="483" alt="Iona Cathedral"
title="Iona Cathedral" />
<br /></div>
<h1>THE DIVINE ADVENTURE</h1>
<hr />
<h1>IONA</h1>
<hr />
<h1>STUDIES IN SPIRITUAL HISTORY</h1>
<hr />
<h3>BY</h3>
<h2>"FIONA MACLEOD"</h2>
<h3>(WILLIAM SHARP)</h3>
<div class="figcenter" style="width: 100px;">
<img src="images/logo.jpg" width="100" height="98" alt="Logo" title="Logo" />
</div>
<h3>LONDON</h3>
<h3>WILLIAM HEINEMANN</h3>
<h3>1912</h3>
<h3><br /><i>UNIFORM EDITION</i></h3>
<hr />
<h4><i>First published 1910. New Edition 1912</i></h4>
<h4><i>Copyright 1895, 1910.</i></h4>
<hr style="width: 65%;" />
<p class="center">THE WIND, SILENCE, AND LOVE</p>
<p class="center">FRIENDS WHO HAVE TAUGHT ME MOST:</p>
<p class="center">BUT SINCE, LONG AGO, TWO WHO ARE NOT FORGOTTEN</p>
<p class="center">WENT AWAY UPON THE ONE, AND DWELL, THEMSELVES</p>
<p class="center">REMEMBERING, IN THE OTHER, I DEDICATE THIS BOOK</p>
<p class="center">TO</p>
<h3>EALASAIDH</h3>
<p class="center">WHOSE LOVE AND SPIRIT LIVE HERE ALSO</p>
<hr style="width: 65%;" />
<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
<div class="center">
<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" width="90%" summary="Contents">
<tr><td align="left"> </td><td align="right">PAGE</td></tr>
<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Divine Adventure</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_1">1</a></td></tr>
<tr><td> </td></tr>
<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Iona</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_91">91</a></td></tr>
<tr><td> </td></tr>
<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">By <ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both 'sun-down' and 'sundown' were used in this text. This was retained.">Sundown</ins> Shores</span>:</td></tr>
<tr><td align="left"><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><span class="smcap">By Sundown Shores</span></span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_252">253</a></td></tr>
<tr><td align="left"><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><span class="smcap">The Wind, Silence, and Love</span></span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_263">263</a></td></tr>
<tr><td align="left"><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><span class="smcap">Barabal: A Memory</span></span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_268">268</a></td></tr>
<tr><td align="left"><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><span class="smcap">The White Heron</span></span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_276">276</a></td></tr>
<tr><td align="left"><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><span class="smcap">The Smoothing of the Hand</span></span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_292">292</a></td></tr>
<tr><td align="left"><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><span class="smcap">The White Fever</span></span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_298">298</a></td></tr>
<tr><td align="left"><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><span class="smcap">The Sea-Madness</span></span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_303">303</a></td></tr>
<tr><td align="left"><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><span class="smcap">Earth, Fire, and Water</span></span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_308">308</a></td></tr>
<tr><td> </td></tr>
<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">From "Green Fire":</span></td></tr>
<tr><td align="left"><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><span class="smcap">The Herdsman</span></span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_318">319</a></td></tr>
<tr><td align="left"><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><span class="smcap">Fragments</span></span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_383">383</a></td></tr>
<tr><td> </td></tr>
<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">A Dream</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_405">405</a></td></tr>
<tr><td> </td></tr>
<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Notes</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_411">411</a></td></tr>
<tr><td> </td></tr>
<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Bibliographical Note</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_433">433</a></td></tr>
<tr><td align="left"><span style="margin-left: 2em;">By Mrs. William Sharp.</span></td></tr>
<tr><td align="left"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></td></tr>
</table></div>
<hr style="width: 65%;" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span></p>
<h2>THE DIVINE ADVENTURE</h2>
<div class="blockquot"><i>Let the beginning, I say, of this little book, as if it
were some lamp, make it clear that a divine miracle
was manifested.</i>"</div>
<p class="right"><span style="margin-right: 5em;"><i>St. Adamnan</i>, Book <span class="smcap">ii</span>. c. <span class="smcap">i</span>.</span></p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span></p>
<hr style="width: 65%;" />
<h2>The Divine Adventure</h2>
<h3>I</h3>
<div class="blockquot">
<p>"We were three: the Body, the Will, and the Soul....
The Will, the Soul, which for the first time
had gone along outside of our common home, had
to take upon themselves bodily presences likewise."—<i>The
Divine Adventure.</i></p>
<br /></div>
<p>I remember that it was on St. John's Eve
we said we would go away together for a
time, but each independently, as three good
friends. We had never been at one, though
we had shared the same home, and had enjoyed
so much in common; but to each, at
the same time, had come the great desire of
truth, than which there is none greater save
that of beauty.</p>
<p>We had long been somewhat weary. No
burden of years, no serious ills, no grief
grown old in its own shadow, distressed us.
We were young. But we had known the two
great ends of life—to love and to suffer. In
deep love there is always an inmost dark
flame, as in the flame lit by a taper: I think<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span>
it is the obscure suffering upon which the
Dancer lives. The Dancer!—Love, who is
Joy, is a leaping flame: he it is who is the son
of that fabled planet, the Dancing Star.</p>
<p>On that St. John's Eve we had talked with
friends on the old mysteries of this day of
pagan festival. At last we withdrew, not
tired or in disagreement, but because the
hidden things of the spirit are the only
realities, and it seemed to us a little idle and
foolish to discuss in the legend that which was
not fortuitous or imaginary, since what then
held up white hands in the moonlight, even
now, in the moonlight of the dreaming mind,
beckons to the Divine Forges.</p>
<p>We left the low-roofed cottage room,
where, though the window was open, two
candles burned with steadfast flame. The
night was listeningly still. Beyond the fuchsia
bushes a sighing rose, where a continuous
foamless wave felt the silences of the shore.
The moonpath, far out upon the bronze sea,
was like a shadowless white road. In the dusk
of the haven glimmered two or three red and
green lights, where the fishing-cobles trailed
motionless at anchor. Inland were shadowy
hills. One of the St. John's Eve fires burned
on the nearest of these, its cone blotting out a
thousand eastern stars. The flame rose and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span>
sank as though it were a pulse: perhaps at
that great height the sea-wind or a mountain
air played upon it. Out of a vast darkness
in the south swung blacker abysses, where
thunders breathed with a prolonged and terrible
sighing; upon their flanks sheet-lightnings
roamed.</p>
<p>There was no sound in the little bay.
Beyond, a fathom of phosphorescence showed
that mackerel were playing in the moonshine.
Near the trap-ledges, which ran into deep
water sheer from the goat-pastures, were
many luminous moving phantoms: the medusæ,
green, purple, pale blue, wandering shapes
filled with ghostly fire.</p>
<p>We stood a while in silence, then one of us
spoke:</p>
<p>"Shall we put aside, for a brief while, this
close fellowship of ours; and, since we cannot
journey apart, go together to find if there
be any light upon those matters which
trouble us, and perhaps discern things better
separately than when trying, as we ever
vainly do, to see the same thing with the
same eyes?"</p>
<p>The others agreed. "It may be I shall
know," said one? "It may be I shall
remember," said the other.</p>
<p>"Then let us go back into the house and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span>
rest to-night, and to-morrow, after we have
slept and eaten well, we can set out with a
light heart."</p>
<p>The others did not answer, for though to
one food meant nothing, and to the other
sleep was both a remembering and a forgetting,
each unwittingly felt the keen needs of him
whom they despised overmuch, and feared
somewhat, and yet loved greatly.</p>
<h3><br />II</h3>
<p>Thus it was that on a midsummer morning
we set out alone and afoot, not bent for
any one place, though we said we would go
towards the dim blue hills in the west, the
Hills of Dream, as we called them; but,
rather, idly troubled by the very uncertainties
which beset our going. We began that long
stepping westward as pilgrims of old who had
the Holy City for their goal, but knew that
midway were perilous lands.</p>
<p>We were three, as I have said: the Body,
the Will, and the Soul. It was strange for
us to be walking there side by side, each
familiar with and yet so ignorant of the
other. We had so much in common, and yet
were so incommunicably alien to one another.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span>
I think that occurred to each of us, as, with
brave steps but sidelong eyes, we passed the
fuchsia bushes, where the wild bees hummed,
and round by the sea pastures, where white
goats nibbled among the yellow flags, and
shaggy kine with their wild hill-eyes browsed
the thyme-sweet salted grass. A fisherman
met us. It was old Ian Macrae, whom I had
known for many years. Somehow, till then,
the thought had not come to me that it
might seem unusual to those who knew my
solitary ways, that I should be going to and
fro with strangers. Then, again for the first
time, it flashed across me that they were so
like me—or save in the eyes I could myself
discern no difference—the likeness would be
as startling as it would be unaccountable.</p>
<p>I stood for a moment, uncertain. "Of
course," I muttered below my breath, "of
course, the others are invisible; I had not
thought of that." I watched them slowly
advance, for they had not halted when I did.
I saw them incline the head with a grave
smile as they passed Ian. The old man had
taken off his bonnet to them, and had stood
aside.</p>
<p>Strangely disquieted, I moved towards
Macrae.</p>
<p>"Ian," I whispered rather than spoke.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span></p>
<p>"Ay," he answered simply, looking at me
with his grave, far-seeing eyes.</p>
<p>"Ian, have you seen my friends before?"</p>
<p>"No, I have never seen them before."</p>
<p>"They have been here for—for—many
days."</p>
<p>"I have not seen them."</p>
<p>"Tell me; do you recognise them?"</p>
<p>"I have not seen them before."</p>
<p>"I mean, do you—do you see any likeness
in them to any you know?"</p>
<p>"No, I see no likeness."</p>
<p>"You are sure, Ian?"</p>
<p>"Ay, for sure. And why not?" The
old fisherman looked at me with questioning
eyes.</p>
<p>"Tell me, Ian, do you see any difference
in me?"</p>
<p>"No, for sure, no."</p>
<p>Bewildered, I pondered this new mystery.
Were we really three personalities, without as
well as within?</p>
<p>At that moment the Will turned. I heard
his voice fall clearly along the heather-fragrant
air-ledges.</p>
<p>"We, too, are bewildered by this mystery,"
he said.</p>
<p>So he knew my thought. It was <i>our</i>
thought. Yes, for now the Soul turned also;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span>
and I heard his sunwarm breath come across
the honeysuckles by the roadside.</p>
<p>"I, too, am bewildered by this mystery,"
he said.</p>
<p>"Ian," I exclaimed to the old man, who
stared wonderingly at us; "Ian tell me this:
what like are my companions; how do they
seem to you?"</p>
<p>The old man glanced at me, startled, then
rubbed his eyes as though he were half-awakened
from a dream.</p>
<p>"Why are you asking that thing?"</p>
<p>"Because, Ian, you do not see any likeness
in them to myself. I had thought—I had
thought they were so like."</p>
<p>Macrae put his wavering, wrinkled hand
to his withered mouth. He gave a chuckling
laugh.</p>
<p>"Ah, I understand now. It is a joke you
are playing on old Ian."</p>
<p>"Maybe ay, and maybe no, Ian; but I do
want to know how they seem to you, those
two yonder."</p>
<p>"Well, well, now, for sure, that friend of
yours there, that spoke first, he is just a
weary, tired old man, like I am myself, and
so like me, now that I look at him, that he
might be my wraith. And the other, he is a
fine lad, a fisher-lad for sure, though I fear<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span>
God's gripped his heart, for I see the old
ancient sorrow in his eyes."</p>
<p>I stared: then suddenly I understood.</p>
<p>"Good-day, Ian," I added hurriedly, "and
the blessing of Himself be upon you and
yours, and upon the nets and the boats."</p>
<p>Then I moved slowly towards my companions,
who awaited me. I understood
now. The old fisherman had seen after his
own kind. The Will, the Soul, which for the
first time had journeyed outside our common
home, had to take upon themselves bodily
presences likewise. But these wavering
images were to others only the reflection of
whoso looked upon them. Old Ian had seen
his own tired self and his lost youth. With a
new fear the Body called to us, and we to
him; and we were one, yet three; and so we
went onward together.</p>
<h3><br />III</h3>
<p>We were silent. It is not easy for three,
so closely knit, so intimate, as we had been
for so many years, suddenly to enter upon
a new comradeship, wherein three that had
been as one were now several. A new reticence
had come to each of us. We walked<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span>
in silence—conscious of the beauty of the
day, in sea and sky and already purpling
moors; of the white gulls flecking the azure,
and the yellowhammers and stonechats flitting
among the gorse and fragrant bog-myrtle—we
knew that none was inclined to speak.
Each had his own thoughts.</p>
<p>The three dreamers—for so we were in
that lovely hour of dream—walked steadfastly
onward. It was not more than an
hour after noon that we came to an inlet
of the sea, so narrow that it looked like a
stream, only that a salt air arose between the
irises which thickly bordered it, and that the
sunken rock-ledges were fragrant with sea-pink
and the stone-convolvulus. The moving
tidal water was grass-green, save where dusked
with long, mauve shadows.</p>
<p>"Let us rest here," said the Body. "It is
so sweet in the sunlight, here by this cool
water."</p>
<p>The Will smiled as he threw himself down
upon a mossy slope that reached from an
oak's base to the pebbly margins.</p>
<p>"It is ever so with you," he said, still
smiling. "You love rest, as the wandering
clouds love the waving hand of the sun."</p>
<p>"What made you think of that?" asked
the Soul abruptly, who till that moment had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span>
been rapt in silent commune with his inmost
thoughts.</p>
<p>"Why do you ask?"</p>
<p>"Because I, too, was thinking that just as
the waving hand of the sun beckons the
white wandering clouds, as a shepherd calls
to his scattered sheep, so there is a hand
waving to us to press forward. Far away,
yonder, a rainbow is being woven of sun
and mist. Perhaps, there, we may come
upon that which we have come out to
see."</p>
<p>"But the Body wishes to rest. And, truly,
it is sweet here in the sunflood, and by this
moving green water, which whispers in the
reeds and flags, and sings its own sea-song
the while."</p>
<p>"Let us rest, then."</p>
<p>And, as we lay there, a great peace came
upon us. There were hushed tears in the
eyes of the Soul, and a dreaming smile upon
the face of the Will, and, in the serene gaze
of the Body, a content that was exceeding
sweet. It was so welcome to lie there and
dream. We knew a rare happiness in that
exquisite quietude.</p>
<p>After a time, the Body rose, and moved to
the water-edge.</p>
<p>"It is so lovely," he said, "I must bathe"—and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span>
with that he threw aside his clothes,
and stood naked among the reeds and yellow
flags which bordered the inlet.</p>
<p>The sun shone upon his white body, the
colour of pale ivory. A delicate shadow
lightly touched him, now here, now there,
from the sunlit green sheaths and stems among
which he stood. He laughed out of sheer joy
and raised his arms, and made a splashing
with his trampling feet.</p>
<p>Looking backward with a blithe glance, he
cried:</p>
<p>"After all, it is good to be alive: neither to
think nor to dream, but just content <i>to be</i>."</p>
<p>Receiving no answer, he laughed merrily,
and, plunging forward, swam seaward against
the sun-dazzle.</p>
<p>His two companions watched him with
shining eyes.</p>
<p>"Truly, he is very fair to look upon," said
the Soul.</p>
<p>"Yes," added the Will, "and perhaps he
has chosen the better part elsewhere as
here."</p>
<p>"Can it be the better part to prefer the
things of the moment of those of Eternity?"</p>
<p>"What is Eternity?"</p>
<p>For a few seconds the Soul was silent. It
was not easy for him to understand that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span>
what was a near horizon to him was a vague
vista, possibly a mirage, to another. He was
ever, in himself, moving just the hither side
of the narrow mortal horizon which Eternity
swims in upon from behind and beyond. The
Will looked at him questioningly, then spoke
again:</p>
<p>"You speak of the things of Eternity.
What is Eternity?"</p>
<p>"Eternity is the Breath of God."</p>
<p>"That tells me nothing."</p>
<p>"It is Time, freed from his Mortality."</p>
<p>"Again, that tells me little. Or, rather, I
am no wiser. What is Eternity to <i>us</i>?"</p>
<p>"It is our perpetuity."</p>
<p>"Then is it only a warrant against Death?"</p>
<p>"No, it is more. Time is our sphere:
Eternity is our home."</p>
<p>"There is no other lesson for you in the
worm, and in the dust?"</p>
<p>"What do you mean, brother?"</p>
<p>"Does dissolution mean nothing to you?"</p>
<p>"What is dissolution?"</p>
<p>It was now the Will who stared with
wondering eyes. To him that question was
as disquieting as that which he had asked
the Soul. It was a minute before he spoke
again.</p>
<p>"You ask me what is dissolution? Do<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span>
you not understand what death means to
<i>me</i>?"</p>
<p>"Why to you more than to me, or to the
Body?"</p>
<p>"What is it to you?"</p>
<p>"A change from a dream of Beauty, to
Beauty."</p>
<p>"And at the worst?"</p>
<p>"Freedom: escape from narrow walls—often
dark and foul."</p>
<p>"In any case nothing but a change, a
swift and absolute change, from what was to
what is?"</p>
<p>"Even so."</p>
<p>"And you have no fear?"</p>
<p>"None. Why should I?"</p>
<p>"Why should you not?"</p>
<p>Again there was a sudden silence between
the two. At last the Soul spoke:</p>
<p>"Why should I not?" I cannot tell you.
But I have no fear. I am a Son of God."</p>
<p>"And we?"</p>
<p>"Ah, yes, dear brother: you, too, and the
Body."</p>
<p>"But we perish!"</p>
<p>"There is the resurrection of the Body."</p>
<p>"Where—when?"</p>
<p>"As it is written. In God's hour."</p>
<p>"Is the worm also the Son of God?"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span></p>
<p>The soul stared downward into the green
water, but did not answer. A look of strange
trouble was in his eyes.</p>
<p>"Is not the Grave on the hither side of
Eternity?"</p>
<p>Still no answer.</p>
<p>"Does God whisper beneath the Tomb?"</p>
<p>At this the Soul rose, and moved restlessly
to and fro.</p>
<p>"Tell me," resumed the Will, "what is
Dissolution?"</p>
<p>"It is the returning into dust of that which
was dust."</p>
<p>"And what is dust?"</p>
<p>"The formless: the inchoate: the mass out
of which the Potter makes new vessels, or
moulds new shapes."</p>
<p>"But <i>you</i> do not go into dust?"</p>
<p>"I came from afar: afar I go again."</p>
<p>"But we—we shall be formless: inchoate?"</p>
<p>"You shall be upbuilded."</p>
<p>"How?"</p>
<p>The Soul turned, and again sat by his
comrade.</p>
<p>"I know not," he said simply.</p>
<p>"But if the Body go back to the dust, and
the life that is in him be blown out like a
wavering flame; and if you who came from<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span>
afar, again return afar; what, then, for me,
who am neither an immortal spirit nor yet of
this frail human clan?"</p>
<p>"God has need of you."</p>
<p>"When—where?"</p>
<p>"How can I tell what I cannot even
surmise?"</p>
<p>"Tell me, tell me this: if I am so wedded
to the Body that, if he perish, I perish also,
what resurrection can there be for me?"</p>
<p>"I do not know."</p>
<p>"Is it a resurrection for the Body if, after
weeks, or years, or scores of years, his decaying
dust is absorbed into the earth, and
passes in a chemic change into the living
world?"</p>
<p>"No: that is not a resurrection: that is a
transmutation."</p>
<p>"Yet that is all. There is nothing else
possible. Dust unto dust. As with the
Body, so with the mind, the spirit of life,
that which I am, the Will. In the Grave
there is no fretfulness any more: neither
any sorrow, or joy, or any thought, or dream,
or fear, or hope whatsoever. Hath not God
Himself said it, through the mouth of His
prophet?"</p>
<p>"I do not understand," murmured the Soul,
troubled.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span></p>
<p>"Because the Grave is not your portion."</p>
<p>"But I, too, must know Death!"</p>
<p>"Yes, truly—a change what was it?—a
change from a dream of Beauty, to Beauty!"</p>
<p>"God knows I would that we could go
together—you, and he yonder, and I; or, if
that cannot be, he being wholly mortal, then
at the least you and I."</p>
<p>"But we cannot. At least, so it seems to us.
But I—I too am alive, I too have dreams
and visions, I too have joys and hopes, I too
have despairs. And for me—<i>nothing</i>. I am,
at the end, as a blown flame."</p>
<p>"It may not be so. Something has whispered
to me at times that you and I are to be made
one."</p>
<p>"Tell me: can the immortal wed the
mortal?"</p>
<p>"No."</p>
<p>"Then how can we two wed, for I am
mortal. My very life depends on the Body.
A falling branch, a whelming wave, a sudden
ill, and in a moment that which was is not.
He, the Body, is suddenly become inert,
motionless, cold, the perquisite of the Grave,
the sport of the maggot and the worm: and
I—I am a subsided wave, a vanished spiral of
smoke, a little fugitive wind-eddy abruptly
ended."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span></p>
<p>"You know not what is the end any more
than I do. In a moment we are translated."</p>
<p>"Ah, is it so with you? O Soul, I thought
that you had a profound surety!"</p>
<p>"I know nothing: I believe."</p>
<p>"Then it may be with you as with us?"</p>
<p>"I know little: I believe."</p>
<p>"When I am well I believe in new, full,
rich, wonderful life—in life in the spiritual as
well as the mortal sphere. And the Body,
when he is ill, he, too, thinks of that which
is your heritage. But if <i>you</i> are not sure—if
<i>you</i> know nothing—may it not be that you,
too, have fed upon dreams, and have dallied
with Will-o'-the-wisp, and are an idle-blown
flame even as I am, and have only a vaster
spiritual outlook? May it not be that you, O
Soul, are but a spiritual nerve in the dark,
confused, brooding mind of Humanity? May
it not be that you and I and the Body go down
unto one end?"</p>
<p>"Not so. There is the word of God."</p>
<p>"We read it differently."</p>
<p>"Yet the Word remains."</p>
<p>"You believe in the immortal life?—You
believe in Eternity?"</p>
<p>"Yes."</p>
<p>"Then what is Eternity?"</p>
<p>"Already you have asked me that!"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span></p>
<p>"You believe in Eternity. What is
Eternity?"</p>
<p>"Continuity."</p>
<p>"And what are the things of Eternity?"</p>
<p>"Immortal desires."</p>
<p>"Then what need for us who are mortal
to occupy ourselves with what must be for ever
beyond us?"</p>
<p>Thereat, with a harsh laugh, the Will
arose, and throwing his garments from him,
plunged into the sunlit green water, with sudden
cries of joy calling to the Body, who was still
rejoicefully swimming in the sun-dazzle as he
breasted the tide.</p>
<p>An hour later we rose, and, silent again,
once more resumed our way.</p>
<h3><br />IV</h3>
<p>It was about the middle of the afternoon
that we moved inland, because of a difficult
tract of cliff and bouldered shore. We
followed the course of a brown torrent, and
were soon under the shadow of the mountain.
The ewes and lambs made incessantly that
mournful crying, which in mountain solitudes
falls from ledge to ledge as though it were
no other than the ancient sorrow of the hills.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span></p>
<p>Thence we emerged, walking among boulders
green with moss and grey with lichen, often
isled among bracken and shadowed by the
wind-wavering birches, or the finger-leafed
rowans already heavy with clusters of ruddy
fruit. Sometimes we spoke of things which
interested us: of the play of light and shadow
in the swirling brown torrent along whose
banks we walked, and by whose grayling-haunted
pools we lingered often, to look at
the beautiful shadowy unrealities of the perhaps
not less shadowy reality which they mirrored:
of the solemn dusk of the pines; of the
mauve shadows which slanted across the
scanty corn that lay in green patches beyond
lonely crofts; of the travelling purple phantoms
of phantom clouds, to us invisible, over
against the mountain-breasts; of a solitary
seamew, echoing the wave in that inland
stillness.</p>
<p>All these things gave us keen pleasure.
The Body often laughed joyously, and talked
of chasing the shadow till it should turn
and leap into him, and he be a wild creature
of the woods again, and be happy, knowing
nothing but the incalculable hour.
It is an old belief of the Gaelic hill-people.</p>
<p>"If one yet older be true," said the Will,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span>
speaking to the Soul, "you and Shadow are
one and the same. Nay, the mystery of the
Trinity is symbolised here again—as in us
three; for there is an ancient forgotten word
of an ancient forgotten people, which means
alike the Breath, the Shadow, and the Soul."<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a></p>
<p>As we walked onward we became more
silent. It was about the sixth hour from noon
that we saw a little coast-town lying amid
green pastures, overhung, as it seemed, by
the tremulous blue band of the sea-line. The
Body was glad, for here were friends, and he
wearied for his kind. The Will and the
Soul, too, were pleased, for now they shared
the common lot of mortality, and knew
weariness as well as hunger and thirst. So
we moved towards the blue smoke of the
homes.</p>
<p>"The home of a wild dove, a branch
swaying in the wind, is sweet to it; and the
green bracken under a granite rock is home
to a tired hind; and so we, who are wayfarers
idler than these, which blindly obey the law,
may well look to yonder village as our home
for to-night."</p>
<p>So spoke the Soul.</p>
<p>The Body laughed blithely. "Yes," he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span>
added, "it is a cheerier home than the green
bracken. Tell me, have you ever heard of
The Three Companions of Night?"</p>
<p>"The Three Companions of Night? I
would take them to be Prayer, and Hope, and
Peace."</p>
<p>"So says the Soul—but what do <i>you</i> say,
O Will?"</p>
<p>"I would take them to be Dream, and Rest,
and Longing."</p>
<p>"We are ever different," replied the Body,
with a sigh, "for the Three Companions of
whom I speak are Laughter, and Wine, and
Love."</p>
<p>"Perhaps we mean the same thing," muttered
the Will, with a smile of bitter irony.</p>
<p>We thought much of these words as we
passed down a sandy lane hung with honeysuckles,
which were full of little birds who
made a sweet chittering.</p>
<p>Prayer, and Hope, and Peace; Dream, and
Rest, and Longing; Laughter, and Wine, and
Love: were these analogues of the Heart's
Desire?</p>
<p>When we left the lane, where we saw a
glow-worm emitting a pale fire as he moved
through the green dusk in the shadow of the
hedge, we came upon a white devious road.
A young man stood by a pile of stones. He<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span>
stopped his labour and looked at us. One of
us spoke to him.</p>
<p>"Why is it that a man like yourself, young
and strong, should be doing this work, which
is for broken men?"</p>
<p>"Why are you breathing?" he asked
abruptly.</p>
<p>"We breathe to live," answered the Body,
smiling blithely.</p>
<p>"Well, I break stones to live."</p>
<p>"Is it worth it?"</p>
<p>"It's better than death."</p>
<p>"Yes," said the Body slowly, "it is better
than death."</p>
<p>"Tell me," asked the Soul, "why is it better
than death?"</p>
<p>"Who wants not to want?"</p>
<p>"Ah—it is the need to want, then, that is
strongest!"</p>
<p>The stone-breaker looked sullenly at the
speaker.</p>
<p>"If you're not anxious to live," he said,
"will you give me what money you have? It
is a pity good money should be wasted. I
know well where I would be spending it this
night of the nights," he added abruptly in
Gaelic.</p>
<p>The Body looked at him with curious
eyes.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span></p>
<p>"And where would you be spending it?"
he asked, in the same language.</p>
<p>"This is the night of the marriage of John
Macdonald, the rich man from America, who
has come back to his own town, and is giving
a big night of it to all his friends, and his
friends' friends."</p>
<p>"Is that the John Macdonald who is marrying
Elsie Cameron?" demanded the Body
eagerly.</p>
<p>"Ay, the same; though it may be the other
daughter of Alastair Rua, the girl Morag."</p>
<p>A flush rose to the face of the Body. His
eyes sparkled.</p>
<p>"It is Elsie," he said to the man.</p>
<p>"Belike," the stone-breaker muttered indifferently.</p>
<p>"Do you know where Alastair Rua and his
daughters are?"</p>
<p>"Yes, at Beann Marsanta Macdonald's big
house of the One-Ash Farm."</p>
<p>"Can you show me the way?"</p>
<p>"I'm going that way."</p>
<p>Thereat the Body turned to his comrades:</p>
<p>"I love her," he said simply; "I love
Morag Cameron."</p>
<p>"She is not for your loving," answered the
Will sharply; "for she has given troth to old
Archibald Sinclair."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span></p>
<p>The Body laughed.</p>
<p>"Love is love," he said lightly.</p>
<p>"Come," interrupted the Soul wearily;
"we have loitered long enough. Let us go."</p>
<p>We stood looking at the stone-breaker, who
was gazing curiously at us. Suddenly he
laughed.</p>
<p>"Why do you laugh?" asked the Soul.</p>
<p>"Well, I'm not for knowing that. But I'll
tell you this: if you two wish to go into the
town, you have only to follow this road. And
if <i>you</i> want to come to One-Ash Farm, then
you must come this other way with me."</p>
<p>"Do not go," whispered the Soul.</p>
<p>But the Body, with an impatient gesture,
drew aside. "Leave me," he added: "I wish
to go with this man. I will meet you to-morrow
morning at the first bridge to the westward of
the little town yonder, just where the stream
slackens over the pebbles."</p>
<p>With reluctant eyes the two companions
saw their comrade leave. For a long time the
Will watched him with a bitter smile.
Redeeming love was in the longing eyes of the
Soul.</p>
<p>When the Body and the stone-breaker
were alone, as they walked towards the distant
farm-steading, where already were lights,
and whence came a lowing of kye in the byres,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span>
for it was the milking hour, they spoke at
intervals.</p>
<p>"Who were those with you?" asked the
man.</p>
<p>"Friends. We have come away together."</p>
<p>"What for?"</p>
<p>"Well, as you would say, to see the
world."</p>
<p>"To see the world?" The man laughed.
"To see the world! Have you money?"</p>
<p>"Enough for our needs."</p>
<p>"Then you will see nothing. The world
gives to them that already have, an' more than
have."</p>
<p>"What do you hope for to-night?"</p>
<p>"To be drunk."</p>
<p>"That is a poor thing to hope for. Better
to think of the laugh and the joke by the
fireside; and of food and drink, too, if you
will: of the pipes, and dancing, and pretty
girls."</p>
<p>"Do as you like. As for me, I hope to be
drunk."</p>
<p>"Why?"</p>
<p>"Why? Because I'll be another man then.
I'll have forgotten all that I now remember
from sunrise to <ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both 'sun-down' and 'sundown' were used in this text. This was retained.">sundown</ins>. Can you think
what it is to break a hope in your heart each
time you crack a stone on the roadside?<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span>
That's what I am, a stone-breaker, an' I crack
stones inside as well as outside. It's a stony
place my heart, God knows."</p>
<p>"You are young to speak like that, and
you speak like a man who has known better
days."</p>
<p>"Oh, I'm ancient enough," said the man,
with a short laugh.</p>
<p>"What meaning does that have?"</p>
<p>"What meaning? Well, it just means this,
that I'm as old as the Bible. For there's
mention o' me there. Only there I'm herding
swine, an' here I'm breaking stones."</p>
<p>"And is <i>your</i> father living?"</p>
<p>"Ay, he curses me o' Sabbaths."</p>
<p>"Then it's not the same as the old story
that is in the Bible?"</p>
<p>"Oh, nothing's the same an' everything's
the same—except when you're drunk, an'
then it's only the same turned outside in. But
see, yonder's the farm. Take my advice, an'
drink. It's better than the fireside, it's better
than food, it's better than kisses, ay it's better
than love, it's as good as hate, an' it's the only
thing you can drown in except despair."</p>
<p>Soon after this the Body entered the house
of the Beann Marsanta Macdonald, and with
laughter and delight met Morag Cameron, and
others whom his heart leaped to see.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span></p>
<p>At midnight, the Will sat in a room in a little
inn, and read out of two books, now out of one,
now out of the other. The one was the Gaelic
Bible, the other was in English and was called
<i>The One Hope</i>.</p>
<p>He rose, as the village clock struck twelve,
and went to the window. A salt breath, pungent
with tide-stranded <ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both 'sea-weed' and 'seaweed' were used in this text. This was retained.">seaweed</ins>, reached him. In
the little harbour, thin shadowy masts ascended
like smoke and melted. A green lantern swung
from one. The howling of a dog rose and fell.
A faint lapping of water was audible. On a
big fishing-coble some men were laughing and
cursing.</p>
<p>Overhead was an oppressive solemnity.
The myriad stars were as the incalculable
notes of a stilled music, become visible in
silence. It was a relief to look into unlighted
deeps.</p>
<p>"These idle lances of God pierce the mind,
slay the spirit," the Will murmured, staring
with dull anger at the white multitude.</p>
<p>"If the Soul were here," he added bitterly,
"he would look at these glittering mockeries as
though they were harbingers of eternal hope.
To me they are whited sepulchres. They say
<i>we live</i>, to those who die; they say <i>God endures,</i>
to Man that perisheth; they whisper the
Immortal Hope to Mortality." Turning, he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span>
went back to where he had left the books. He
lifted one, and read:—</p>
<p>"<i>Have we not the word of God Himself that
Time and Chance happeneth to all: that soon or
late we shall all be caught in a net, we whom
Chance hath for his idle sport, and upon whom
Time trampleth with impatient feet? Verily, the
rainbow is not more frail, more fleeting, than this
drear audacity.</i>"</p>
<p>With a sigh he put the book down, and lifted
the other. Having found the page he sought,
he read slowly aloud:—</p>
<p>"<i>... but Time and Chance happeneth to them
all. For man also knoweth not his time: as the
fishes that are taken in an evil net, and as the
birds that are caught in the snare, even so are the
sons of men snared in an evil time, when it
falleth suddenly upon them.</i>"</p>
<p>He went to the window again, brooding
darkly. A slight sound caught his ear. He
saw a yellow light run out, leap across the
pavement and pass like a fan of outblown
flame. Then the door closed, and we heard a
step on the stone flags. He looked down. The
Soul was there.</p>
<p>"Are you restless? Can you not sleep?" he
asked.</p>
<p>"No, dear friend. But my heart is weary
because of the Body. Yet before I go, let me<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span>
bid you read that which follows upon what
you have just read. It is not only Time and
Chance upon which to dwell; but upon this,
that God knows that which He does, and the
hour and the way, and sees the end in the
beginning."</p>
<p>And while the Soul moved softly down the
little windy street, the Will opened the Book
again, and read as the Soul had bidden.</p>
<p>"It may be so," he muttered, "it may be
that the dreamer may yet wake to behold his
dream—As thou knowest not what is the way
of the wind, even so thou knowest not the work
of God Who doeth all?"</p>
<p>With that he sighed wearily, and then,
afraid to look again at the bitter eloquence of
the stars, lit a candle as he lay down on his
bed, and watched the warm companionable
flame till sleep came upon him, and he dreamed
no more of the rue and cypress, but plucked
amaranths in the moonshine.</p>
<p>Meanwhile the Soul walked swiftly to the
outskirts of the little town, and out by the
grassy links where clusters of white geese
huddled in sleep, and across the windy common
where a tethered ass stood, with drooping
head, his long, twitching ears now motionless.
In the moonlight, the shadow of the
weary animal stretched to fantastic lengths,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span>
and at one point, when the startled Soul
looked at it, he beheld the shadow of the
Cross.</p>
<p>When he neared One-Ash Farm he heard
a loud uproar from within. Many couples
were still dancing, and the pipes and a shrill
flute added to the tumult. Others sang and
laughed, or laughed and shouted, or cursed
hoarsely. Through the fumes of smoke and
drink rippled women's laughter.</p>
<p>He looked in at a window, with sad eyes.
The first glance revealed to him the Body, his
blue eyes aflame, his face flushed with wine,
his left arm holding close to his heart a bright
winsome lass, with hair dishevelled, and wild
eyes, but with a wonderful laughing eagerness
of joy.</p>
<p>In vain he called. His voice was suddenly
grown faint. But what the ear could not
hear, the heart heard. The Body rose
abruptly.</p>
<p>"I will drink no more," he said.</p>
<p>A loud insensate laugh resounded near him.
The stone-breaker lounged heavily from a bench,
upon the servant's table.</p>
<p>"I am drunk now, my friend," the man
cried with flaming eyes. "I am drunk, an' now
I am as reckless as a king, an' as serene as the
Pope, an' as heedless as God."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span></p>
<p>The Soul turned his gaze and looked at him.
He saw a red flame rising from grey ashes.
The ashes were his heart. The flame was his
impotent, perishing life.</p>
<p>Stricken with sorrow, the Soul went to the
door, and entered. He went straight to the
stone-breaker, who was now lying with head
and arms prone on the deal table.</p>
<p>He whispered in the drunkard's ear. The
man lifted his head, and stared with red, brutish
eyes.</p>
<p>"What is that?" he cried.</p>
<p>"Your mother was pure and holy. She died
to give you her life. What will it be like on
the day she asks for it again?"</p>
<p>The man raised an averting arm. There was
a stare of horror in his eyes.</p>
<p>"I know you, you devil. Your name is
Conscience."</p>
<p>The Soul looked at the Speaker. "I do not
know," he answered simply; "but I believe in
God."</p>
<p>"In the love of God?"</p>
<p>"In the love of God."</p>
<p>"He dwells everywhere?"</p>
<p>"Everywhere."</p>
<p>"Then I will find Him, I will find His love,
<i>here</i>"—and with that the man raised the
deathly spirit to his lips again, and again<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span>
drank. Then, laughing and cursing, he threw
the remainder at the feet of his unknown
friend.</p>
<p>"Farewell!" he shouted hoarsely, so that
those about him stared at him and at the new-comer.</p>
<p>The Soul turned sadly, and looked for his
strayed comrade, but he was nowhere to be
seen. In a room upstairs that friend whom
he loved was whispering eager vows of sand
and wind; and the girl Morag, clinging close
to him, tempted him as she herself was
tempted, so that both stood in that sand, and
in the intertangled hair of each that wind
blew.</p>
<p>The Soul saw, and understood. None
spoke to him, a stranger, as he went slowly
from the house, though all were relieved when
that silent, sad-eyed foreigner withdrew.</p>
<p>Outside, the cool sea-wind fell freshly upon
him. He heard a corncrake calling harshly
to his mate, where the corn was yellowing in
a little stone-dyked field; and a night-jar
<ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'creening'">creeping</ins> forward on a juniper, uttering his
whirring love-note; and he blessed their
sweet, innocent lust. Then, looking upward,
he watched for a while the white procession
of the stars. They were to him the symbolic
signs of the mystery of God. He bowed his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span>
head. "Dust of the world," he muttered
humbly, "dust of the world."</p>
<p>Moving slowly by the house—so doubly
noisy, so harshly discordant, against the large,
serene, nocturnal life—he came against the
gable of an open window. On the ledge
lay a violin, doubtless discarded by some
reveller. The Soul lifted it, and held it up to
the night-wind. When it was purified, and
the vibrant wood was as a nerve in that fragrant
darkness, he laid it on his shoulder and played
softly.</p>
<p>What was it that he played? Many heard
it, but none knew what the strain was, or
whence it came. The Soul remembered, and
played. It is enough.</p>
<p>The soft playing stole into the house as
though it were the cool sea-wind, as though
it were the flowing dusk. Beautiful, unfamiliar
sounds, and sudden silences passing sweet,
filled the rooms. The last guests left hurriedly,
hushed, strangely disquieted. The dwellers in
the farmstead furtively bade good-night, and
slipt away.</p>
<p>For an hour, till the sinking of the moon,
the Soul played. He played the Song of
Dreams, the Song of Peace, the three Songs
of Mystery. The evil that was in the house
ebbed. Everywhere, at his playing, the secret<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span>
obscure life awoke. Nimble aerial creatures
swung, invisibly passive, in the quiet
dark. From the brown earth, from hidden
sanctuaries in rocks and trees, green and
grey lives slid, and stood intent. Out of the
hillside came those of old. There were
many eager voices, like leaves lapping in a
wind. The wild-fox lay down, with red
tongue lolling idly: the stag rose from the
fern, with dilated nostrils; the night-jar
ceased, the corncrake ceased, the moon-wakeful
thrushes made no single thrilling
note. The silence deepened. Sleep came
stealing softly out of the obscure, swimming
dusk. There was not a swaying reed, a
moving leaf. The strange company of shadows
stood breathless. Among the tree-tops the
loosened stars shone terribly—lonely fires of
silence.</p>
<p>The Soul played. Once he thought of the
stone-breaker. He played into his heart.
The man stirred, and tears oozed between his
heavy lids. It was his mother's voice that he
heard, singing-low a cradle-sweet song, and
putting back her white hair that she might
look earthward to her love. "Grey sweetheart,
grey sweetheart," he moaned. Then his
heart lightened, and a moonlight of peace
hallowed that solitary waste place.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span></p>
<p>Again, at the last, the Soul thought of his
comrade, heavy with wine in the room overhead,
drunken with desire. And to him he
played the imperishable beauty of Beauty, the
Immortal Love, so that, afterwards, he should
remember the glory rather than the shame of
his poor frailty. What he played to the girl's
heart only those women know who hear the
whispering words of Mary the Mother in
sleep, when a second life breathes beneath
each breath.</p>
<p>When he ceased, deep slumber was a balm
upon all. He fell upon his knees and prayed.</p>
<p>"Beauty of all Beauty," he prayed, "let
none perish without thee."</p>
<p>It was thus that we three, who were one,
realised how Prayer and Hope and Peace, how
Dream and Rest and Longing, how Laughter
and Wine and Love, are in truth but shadowy
analogues of the Heart's Desire.</p>
<h3><br />V</h3>
<p>At dawn we woke. A movement of gladness
was in the lovely tides of morning—delicate
green, and blue, and gold. The spires of the
grasses were washed in dew; the innumerous
was as one green flower that had lain all night
in the moonshine.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span></p>
<p>We had agreed to meet at the bridge over
the stream where it lapsed through gravelly
beaches just beyond the little town.</p>
<p>There the Soul and the Will long awaited
the Body. The sun was an hour risen, and
had guided a moving multitude of gold and
azure waters against the long reaches of yellow-poppied
sand, and to the bases of the great
cliffs, whose schist shone like chrysolite, and
whose dreadful bastions of black basalt loomed
in purple shadow, like suspended thunder-clouds
on a windless afternoon.</p>
<p>The air was filled with the poignant sweetness
of the loneroid or bog-myrtle, meadow-sweet,
and white wild-roses. The green smell
of the bracken, the delicate woodland odour
of the mountain-ash, floated hitherward and
thitherward on the idle breath of the wind,
sunwarm when it came across the sea-pinks
and thyme-set grass, cool and fresh when it
eddied from the fern-coverts, or from the
heather above the hillside-boulders where the
sheep lay, or from under the pines at the bend
of the sea-road where already the cooing of
grey doves made an indolent sweetness.</p>
<p>The Soul was silent. He had not slept,
but, after his playing in the dark, peace had
come to him.</p>
<p>Before dawn he had gone into the room<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span>
where the Will lay, and had looked long at
his comrade. In sleep the Will more resembled
him, as when awake he the more resembled
the Body. A deep pity had come upon the
Soul for him whom he loved so well, but
knew so little.</p>
<p>Why was it, he wondered, that he felt less
alien from the Body? Why was it that this
strange, potent, inscrutable being, whom both
loved, should be so foreign to each? The
Body feared him. As for himself, he, too,
feared him at times. There were moments
when all his marvellous background of the
immortal life shrank before the keen gaze of
his friend. Was it possible that Mind could
have a life apart from mortal substances?
Was it possible? If so——</p>
<p>It was here that the Will awoke, and smiled
at his friend.</p>
<p>He gave no greeting, but answered his
thought.</p>
<p>"Yes," he said gravely, and as though continuing
an argument, "it is impossible, if you
mean the mortal substance of our brother, the
Body. But yet not without material substance.
May it not be that the Mind may have an
undreamed-of shaping power, whereby it can
instantly create?"</p>
<p>"Create what?"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span></p>
<p>"A new environment for <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'it's'">its</ins> need? Drown
it in the deepest gulfs of the sea, and it will,
at the moment it is freed from the body,
sheathe itself in a like shape, and habit itself
with free spaces of air, so that it may breathe,
and live, and emerge into the atmosphere, there
to take on a new shape, to involve itself in new
circumstances, to live anew?"</p>
<p>"It is possible. But would that sea-change
leave the mind the same or another?"</p>
<p>"The Mind would come forth one and
incorruptible."</p>
<p>"If in truth, the Mind be an indivisible
essence?"</p>
<p>"Yes, if the mind be one and indivisible."</p>
<p>"You believe it so?"</p>
<p>"Tell me, are you insubstantial? You,
yourself, below this accident of mortality?"</p>
<p>"I know not what you mean."</p>
<p>"You were wondering if, after all, it were
possible for me to have a life, a conscious,
individual continuity, apart from this mortal
substance in which you and I now share—counterparts
of that human home we both
love and hate, that moving tent of the
Illimitable, which at birth appears a speck on
sands of the Illimitable, and at death again
abruptly disappears. You were wondering
this. But, tell me: have you yourself never<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span>
wondered how you can exist, as yourself, apart
from something of this very actuality, this
form, this materialism to which you find yourself
so alien in the Body?"</p>
<p>"I am spirit. I am a breath."</p>
<p>"But you are you?"</p>
<p>"Yes, I am I."</p>
<p>"The surpassing egotism is the same, whether
in you, the Soul, who are but a breath; or in
me, the Will, who am but a condition; or in
our brother, the Body, a claimant to Eternal
Life while perishing in his mortality!"</p>
<p>"I live in God. Whence I came, thither
shall I return."</p>
<p>"A breath?"</p>
<p>"It may be."</p>
<p>"Yet you shall be you?"</p>
<p>"Yes; I."</p>
<p>"Then that breath which will be you must
have form, even as the Body must have
form."</p>
<p>"Form is but the human formula for the
informulate."</p>
<p>"Nay, Form <i>is</i> life."</p>
<p>"You have ever one wish, it seems to me,
O Will: to put upon me the heavy yoke of
mortality."</p>
<p>"Not so: but to lift it from myself."</p>
<p>"And the Body?"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span></p>
<p>"Where did you leave him last night?"</p>
<p>"You remember what he said about the
Three Companions of Night: Laughter, and
Wine, and Love? I left him with these."</p>
<p>"They are also called Tears, and Weariness,
and the Grave. He has his portion. Perhaps
he does well. Death intercepts many
retributions."</p>
<p>"He, too, has his dream within a dream."</p>
<p>"Yes, you played to it, in the silence and
the darkness."</p>
<p>"You heard my playing—you here, I
there?"</p>
<p>"I heard."</p>
<p>"And did you sleep or wake, comforted?"</p>
<p>"I heard a Wind. I have heard it often.
I heard, too, my own voice singing in the
dark."</p>
<p>"What was the song?"</p>
<p>"This:—</p>
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">In the silences of the woods<br /></span>
<span class="i0">I have heard all day and all night<br /></span>
<span class="i0">The moving multitudes<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Of the Wind in flight.<br /></span>
<span class="i0">He is named Myriad:<br /></span>
<span class="i0">And I am sad<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Often, and often I am glad;<br /></span>
<span class="i0">But oftener I am white<br /></span>
<span class="i0">With fear of the dim broods<br /></span>
<span class="i0">That are his multitudes."</span>
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span></div></div>
<p>"And then, when you had heard that
song?"</p>
<p>"There was a rush of wings. My hair
streamed behind me. Then a sudden stillness,
out of which came moonlight; and a
star fell slowly through the dark, and as it
passed my face I felt lips pressed against
mine, and it seemed to me that you kissed
me."</p>
<p>"And when I kissed you, did I whisper any
word?"</p>
<p>"You whispered: '<i>I am the Following
Love.</i>'"</p>
<p>"And you knew then that it was the
Breath of God, and you had deep peace, and
slept?"</p>
<p>"I knew that it was the Following Love,—that
is the Breath of God, and I had deep
peace, and I slept."</p>
<p>The Soul crossed from the window to the
bed, and stooped, and kissed the Will.</p>
<p>"Beloved," he whispered, "the star was but
a dewdrop of the Peace that passeth understanding.
And can it be that to you, to whom
the healing dew was vouchsafed, shall be
denied the water-springs?"</p>
<p>"Ah, beautiful dreamer of dreams, bewilder
me no more with your lovely sophistries.
See, it is already late, and we have to meet<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span>
the Body at the shore-bridge over the little
stream!"</p>
<p>It was then that the two, having had a spare
meal of milk and new bread, left the inn, and
went, each communing with his own thoughts,
to the appointed place.</p>
<p>They heard the Body before they saw him,
for he was singing as he came. It was a
strange, idle fragment of a song—"The Little
Children of the Wind"—a song that some
one had made, complete in its incompleteness,
as a wind-blown blossom, and, as a blossom
discarded by a flying bird, thrown heedlessly
on the wayside by its unknown wandering
singer:—</p>
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">I hear the little children of the wind<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Crying solitary in lonely places:<br /></span>
<span class="i0">I have not seen their faces,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">But I have seen the leaves eddying behind,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">The little tremulous leaves of the wind.</span>
</div></div>
<p>The Soul looked at the Will.</p>
<p>"So he, too, has heard the Wind," he said
softly.</p>
<h3><br />VI</h3>
<p>All that day we journeyed westward.
Sometimes we saw, far off, the pale blue<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span>
films of the Hills of Dream, those elusive
mountains towards which our way was set.
Sometimes they were so startlingly near that,
from gorse upland or inland valley, we
thought we saw the shadow-grass shake in
the wind's passage, or smelled the thyme still
wet with dew where it lay under the walls of
mountain-boulders. But at noon we were no
nearer than when, at sunrise, we had left the
little sea-town behind us: and when the
throng of bracken-shadows filled the green
levels between the fern and the pines—like
flocks of sheep following fantastic herdsmen—the
Hills of the West were still as near, and
as far, as the bright raiment of the rainbow
which the shepherd sees lying upon his lonely
pastures.</p>
<p>But long before noon we were glad because
of what happened to one of us.</p>
<p>The dawn had flushed into a wilderness of
rose as we left the bridge by the stream. Long
shafts of light, plumed with pale gold, were
flung up out of the east: everywhere was the
tremulous awakening of the new day. A score
of yards from the highway a cottage stood,
sparrows stirring in the thatch, swift fairy-spiders
running across the rude white-washed
walls, a redbreast singing in the dew-drenched
fuchsia-bush. The blue peat-smoke which rose<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span>
above it was so faint as to be invisible beyond
the rowan which stood sunways. The westward
part of the cottage was a byre: we could
hear the lowing of a cow, the clucking of
fowls.</p>
<p>In every glen, on each hillside, are crofts
such as this. There was nothing unusual in
what we saw, save that a collie crouched
whimpering beyond a dyke on the farther side
of the rowan.</p>
<p>"All is not well here," said the Will.</p>
<p>"No," murmured the Soul, "I see the
shadowy footsteps of those who serve the Evil
One. Await me here."</p>
<p>With that the Soul walked swiftly towards
the cottage, and looked in at the little window.
His thought was straightway ours, and we
knew that a woman lay within and was about
to give birth to a child. We knew, also, that
those who had dark, cruel eyes, and wore each
the feather of a hawk, had no power within,
but were baffled, and roamed restlessly outside
the cottage on the side of shadow. The <i>Fuath</i>
himself was not there, but when his call came
the evil spirits rose like a flock of crows and
passed away. Then we saw our comrade
stand back, and bow down, and fall upon his
knees.</p>
<p>When he rejoined us we were for a moment<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span>
as one, and saw seven tall and beautiful spirits,
starred and flame-crested, hand-clasped and
standing circlewise round the cottage. They
were Sons of Joy, who sang because in that
mortal hour was born an immortal soul who in
the white flame and the red of mortal life was
to be a spirit of gladness and beauty. For
there is no joy in the domain of the Spirit like
that of the birth of a new joy.</p>
<p>A long while we walked in silence. In the
eyes of the Soul we saw a divine and beautiful
light: in the eyes of the Will we saw rainbow-spanned
depths: in the eyes of the Body we
saw gladness.</p>
<p>"We are one!"</p>
<p>None knew who spoke. For a moment I
heard my own voice, saw my own shadow in
the grass; then, in the twinkling of an eye,
three stood, looking at each other with startled
gaze.</p>
<p>"Let us go," said the Soul; "we have a long
way yet to travel."</p>
<p>Each dreaming his own dream, we walked
onward. Suddenly the Soul turned and looked
in the eyes of the Body.</p>
<p>"You are thinking of your loneliness," he
said gravely.</p>
<p>"Yes," answered the Body.</p>
<p>"And I too," said the Will.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span></p>
<p>For a time no word more was said.</p>
<p>"I am indeed alone." This I murmured to
myself after a long while, and in a moment the
old supreme wisdom sank, and we were not one
but three.</p>
<p>"But you, O Soul," said the Will, "how can
you be alone when in every hour you have the
company of the invisible, and see the passage
of powers and influence, of demons and angels,
creatures of the triple universe, souls, and the
pale flight of the unembodied?"</p>
<p>"I do not know loneliness because of what I
see or do not see, but because of what I feel.
When I walk here with you side by side it is
as though I walked along a narrow shore
between a fathomless sea and fathomless
night."</p>
<p>The thought of one was the thought of
three. I shivered with that great loneliness.
The Body glanced sidelong at the Will, the
Will at the Soul.</p>
<p>"It is not good to dwell upon that loneliness,"
said the last.</p>
<p>"To you, O Body, and to you, O Will, as
to me, it is the signal of Him whom we have
lost. Listen, and in the deepest hollow of
loneliness we can hear the voice of the
Shepherd."</p>
<p>"I hear nothing," said the Body.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span></p>
<p>"I hear an echo," said the Will: "I hear
an echo; but so, too, I can hear the authentic
voice of the sea in a hollow shell. Authentic! ...
when I know well that the murmur is no
eternal voice, no whisper of the wave made
one with pearly silence, but only the sound of
my flowing blood heard idly in the curves of
ear and shell?"</p>
<p>"Ah!" ... cried the Body, "it is a lie,
that cruel word of science. The shell must
ever murmur of the sea; if not, at least let us
dream that it does. Soon, soon we shall have
no dream left. How am I to know that <i>all</i>,
that everything, is not but an idle noise in my
ears? How am I to know that the Hope of
the Will, and the Voice of the Soul, and the
message of the Word, and the Whisper of the
Eternal Spirit, are not one and all but a
mocking echo in that shell which for me is
the Shell of Life, but may be only the cold
inhabitation of my dreams?"</p>
<p>"Yet were it not for these echoes," the Soul
answered, "life would be intolerable for you,
as for you too, my friend."</p>
<p>The Will smiled scornfully.</p>
<p>"Dreams are no comfort, no solace, no relief
from weariness even, if one knows them to be
no more than the spray above the froth of a
distempered mind."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span></p>
<p>Suddenly one of us began in a low voice a
melancholy little song:—</p>
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">I hear the sea-song of the blood in my heart,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">I hear the sea-song of the blood in my ears;<br /></span>
<span class="i0">And I am far apart,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">And lost in the years.</span>
</div><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">But when I lie and dream of that which was<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Before the first man's shadow flitted on the grass—<br /></span>
<span class="i0">I am stricken dumb<br /></span>
<span class="i0">With sense of that to come.</span>
</div><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">Is then this wildering sea-song but a part<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Of the old song of the mystery of the years—<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Or only the echo of the tired Heart<br /></span>
<span class="i0">And of Tears?</span>
</div></div>
<p>But none answered, and so again we walked
onward, silent. The wind had fallen, and in
the noon-heat we began to grow weary. It
was with relief that we saw the gleam of
water between the branches of a little wood
of birches, which waded towards it through a
tide of bracken. Beyond the birks shimmered
a rainbow; a stray cloud had trailed from
glen to glen, and suddenly broken among the
tree-tops.</p>
<p>"There goes Yesterday!" cried the Body
laughingly—alluding to the saying that the
morning rainbow is the ghost of the day that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span>
passed at dawn. The next moment he broke
into a fragment of song:—</p>
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">Brother and Sister, wanderers they<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Out of the Golden Yesterday—<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Thro' the dusty Now and the dim To-morrow<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Hand-in-hand go Joy and Sorrow.</span>
</div></div>
<p>"Yes, joy and sorrow, O glad Body,"
exclaimed the Will—"but it is the joy only
that is vain as the rainbow, which has no other
message. It should be called the Bow of
Sorrow."</p>
<p>"Not so," said the Soul gently, "or, if so,
not as you mean, dear friend:—</p>
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">It is not Love that gives the clearest sight:<br /></span>
<span class="i0">For out of bitter tears, and tears unshed,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Riseth the Rainbow of Sorrow overhead,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">And 'neath the Rainbow is the clearest light.</span>
</div></div>
<p>The Will smiled:—</p>
<p>"I too must have my say, dear poets:—</p>
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">Where rainbows rise through sunset rains<br /></span>
<span class="i2">By shores forlorn of isles forgot,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">A solitary Voice complains<br /></span>
<span class="i2">'The World is here, the World is not.'</span>
</div><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">The Voice may be the wind, or sea,<br /></span>
<span class="i2">Or spirit of the <ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both 'sun-down' and 'sundown' were used in this text. This was retained.">sundown</ins> West:<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Or, mayhap, some sweet air set free<br /></span>
<span class="i2">From off the Islands of the Blest:<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span></span>
</div><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">It may be; but I turn my face<br /></span>
<span class="i2">To that which still I hold so dear;<br /></span>
<span class="i0">And lo, the voices of the days—<br /></span>
<span class="i2">'The World is not, the World is here.'</span>
</div><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">'Tis the same end whichever way<br /></span>
<span class="i2">And either way is soon forgot:<br /></span>
<span class="i0">The World is all in all, To-day:<br /></span>
<span class="i2">'To-morrow all the World is not.'</span>
</div></div>
<h3><br />VII</h3>
<p>In the noon-heat we lay, for rest and
coolness, by the pool, and on the shadow-side
of a hazel. The water was of so dark
a brown that we knew it was of a great
depth, and, indeed, even at the far verge,
a heron, standing motionless, wetted her
breast-feathers.</p>
<p>In the mid-pool, where the brown lawns
sloped into depths of purple-blue, we could
see a single cloud, invisible otherwise where
we lay. Nearer us, the water mirrored a
mountain-ash heavy with ruddy clusters. That
long, feathery foliage, that reddening fruit,
hung in a strange, unfamiliar air; the stranger,
that amid the silence of those phantom
branches ever and again flitted furtive shadow-birds.</p>
<p>We had walked for hours, and were now<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span>
glad to rest. With us we had brought oaten
bread and milk, and were well content.</p>
<p>"It was by a pool such as this," said one
of us, after a long interval, "that dreamers of
old called to Connla, and Connla heard. That
was the mortal name of one whose name we
know not."</p>
<p>"Call him now," whispered the Body
eagerly.</p>
<p>The Soul leaned forward, and stared into
the fathomless brown dusk.</p>
<p>"Speak, Connla! Who art thou?"</p>
<p>Clear as a Sabbath-bell across windless
pastures we heard a voice:</p>
<p>"I am of those who wait yet a while. I am
older than all age, for my youth is Wisdom;
and I am younger than all youth, for I am
named To-morrow."</p>
<p>We heard no more. In vain, together,
separately, we sought to break that silence
which divides the mortal moment from hourless
time. The Soul himself could not hear,
or see, or even remember, because of that
mortal raiment of the flesh which for a
time he had voluntarily taken upon himself.</p>
<p>"I will tell you a dream that is not all a
dream," he said at last, after we had lain a
long while pondering what that voice had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span>
uttered, that voice which showed that the
grave held a deeper mystery than silence.</p>
<p>The Will looked curiously at him.</p>
<p>"Is it a dream wherein we have shared?"
he asked slowly.</p>
<p>"That I know not: yet it may well be so. I
call my dream 'The Sons of Joy.' If you or
the Body have also dreamed, let each relate
the dream."</p>
<p>"Yes," said the Body, "I have dreamed it.
But I would call it rather 'The Sons of
Delight.'"</p>
<p>"And I," said the Will, "The Sons of
Silence."</p>
<p>"Tell it," said the Soul, looking towards the
Body.</p>
<p>"It was night," answered the Body at
once: "and I was alone in a waste place.
My feet were entangled among briars and
thorns, and beside me was a quagmire. On
the briar grew a great staff, and beside it a
circlet of woven thorn. I could see them, in
a soft, white light. It must have been moonlight,
for on the other side of the briar I saw,
in the moonshine, a maze of wild roses. They
were lovely and fragrant. I would have liked
to take the staff, but it was circled with the
thorn-wreath; so I turned to the moonshine
and the wild roses. It was then that I saw a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span>
multitude of tall and lovely figures, men and
women, all rose-crowned, and the pale, beautiful
faces of the women with lips like rose-leaves.
They were singing. It was the Song
of Delight. I, too, sang. And as I sang, I
wondered, for I thought that the eyes of those
about me were heavy with love and dreams,
as though each had been pierced with a
shadowy thorn. But still the song rose, and
I knew that the flowers in the grass breathed
to it, and that the vast slow cadence of the
stars was its majestic measure. Then the
dawn broke, and I saw all the company,
winged and crested with the seven colours,
press together, so that a rainbow was upbuilded.
In the middle space below the rainbow,
a bird sang. Then I knew I was that
bird; and as the rainbow vanished, and the
dawn grew grey and chill, I sank to the
ground. But it was all bog and swamp. I
knew I should sing no more. But I heard
voices saying: "O happy, wonderful bird, who
has seen all delight, whose song was so rapt,
sing, sing, sing!" But when I could sing no
more I was stoned, and lay dead.</p>
<p>"That was my dream."</p>
<p>The Soul sighed.</p>
<p>"It was not thus I dreamed," he murmured;
"but thus:<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span>—</p>
<p>"I stood, at night, on the verge of the sea,
and looked at the maze of stars. And while
looking and dreaming, I heard voices, and,
turning, beheld a multitude of human beings.
All were sorrowful; many were heavy with
weariness and despair; all suffered from some
grievous ill. Among them were many who
cried continually that they had no thought, or
dream, no wish, but to forget all, and be at
rest:</p>
<p>"I called to them, asking whither they were
bound?</p>
<p>"'We are journeying to the Grave,' came
the sighing answer.</p>
<p>"Then suddenly I saw the Grave. An angel
stood at the portals. He was so beautiful
that the radiance of the light upon his brow lit
that shoreless multitude; in every heart a
little flame arose. The name of that divine
one was Hope.</p>
<p>"As shadow by shadow slipt silently into
the dark road behind the Grave, I saw the
Angel touch for a moment every pale brow.</p>
<p>"I knew at last that I saw beyond the
Grave. Infinite ways traversed the universe,
wherein suns and moons and stars hung
like fruit. Multitude within multitude was
there.</p>
<p>"Then, again, suddenly I stood where I<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span>
had been, and saw the Grave reopen, and
from it troop back a myriad of bright
and beautiful beings. I could see that
some were souls <ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both 're-born' and 'reborn' were used in this text. This was retained.">re-born</ins>, some were lovely
thoughts, dreams, hopes, aspirations, influences,
powers and mighty spirits too. And all
sang:</p>
<p>"'We are the Sons of Joy.'</p>
<p>"That was my dream."</p>
<p>We were still for a few moments. Then the
Will spoke.</p>
<p>"This dream of ours is one thing as the
Body's, and another as the Soul's. It is yet
another, as I remember it:—</p>
<p>"On a night of a cold silence, when the
breath of the equinox sprayed the stars into
a continuous dazzle, I heard the honk of the
wild geese as they cleft their way wedgewise
through the gulfs overhead.</p>
<p>"In the twinkling of an eye I was beyond
the last shadow of the last wing.</p>
<p>"Before me lay a land solemn with auroral
light. For a thousand years, that were as a
moment, I wandered therein. Then, far
before me, I saw an immense semi-circle of
divine figures, tall, wonderful, clothed with
moonfire, each with uplifted head, as a forest
before a wind. To the right they held the
East, and to the left the West.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span></p>
<p>"'Who are you?' I cried, as I drifted
through them like a mist of pale smoke.</p>
<p>"'We are the Laughing Gods,' they
answered.</p>
<p>"Then after I had drifted on beyond the
reach of sea or land, to a frozen solitude
of ice, I saw again a vast concourse stretching
crescent-wise from east to west: taller, more
wonderful, crowned with stars, and standing
upon dead moons white with perished
time.</p>
<p>"'Who are you?' I cried, as I went past
them like a drift of pale smoke.</p>
<p>"'We are the Gods who laugh not,' they
answered.</p>
<p>"Then when I had drifted beyond the silence
of the Pole, and there was nothing but
unhabitable air, and the dancing fires were a
flicker in the pale sheen far behind, I saw
again a vast concourse stretching crescent-wise
from east to west. They were taller
still; they were more wonderful still. They
were crowned with flaming suns, and their
feet were white with the dust of ancient
constellations.</p>
<p>"'Who are you!' I cried, as I went past
them like a mist of pale smoke.</p>
<p>"'We are the Gods,' they answered.</p>
<p>"And while I waned into nothingness I felt<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span>
in my nostrils the salt smell of the sea, and,
listening, I heard the honk of the wild geese
wedging southward.</p>
<p>"That was my dream."</p>
<p>When the Will ceased, nothing was said.
We were too deeply moved by strange
thoughts, one and all. Was it always to be
thus ... that we might dream one dream,
confusedly real, confusedly unreal, when we
three were one; but that when each dreamed
alone, the dream, the vision, was ever to be
distinct in form and significance?</p>
<p>We lay resting for long. After a time we
slept. I cannot remember what then we
dreamed, but I know that these three dreams
were become one, and that what the Soul saw
and what the Will saw and what the Body saw
was a more near and searching revelation in
this new and one dream than in any of the
three separately. I pondered this, trying to
remember: but the deepest dreams are
always unrememberable, and leave only a fragrance,
a sound as of a quiet footfall passing
into silence, or a cry, or a sense of something
wonderful, unimagined, or of light intolerable:
but I could recall only the memory of a
moment ... a moment wherein, in a flash of
lightning, I had seen all, understood all.</p>
<p>I rose ... there was a dazzle on the water,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span>
a shimmer on every leaf, a falling away as of
walls of air into the great river of the wind ...
and there were three, not one, each staring
dazed at the other, in the ears of each the
bewilderment of the already faint echo of that
lost "I."</p>
<h3><br />VIII</h3>
<p>Towards <ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both 'sun-down' and 'sundown' were used in this text. This was retained.">sundown</ins> we came upon a hamlet,
set among the hills. Our hearts had beat
quicker as we drew near, for with the glory
of light gathered above the west the mountains
had taken upon them a bloom soft and
wonderful, and we thought that at last we
were upon the gates of the hills towards which
we had journeyed so eagerly. But when we
reached the last pines on the ridge we saw the
wild doves flying far westward. Beyond us,
under a pale star, dimly visible in a waste of
rose, were the Hills of Dream.</p>
<p>The Soul wished to go to them at once, for
now they seemed so near to us that we might
well reach them with the rising of the moon.
But the others were tired, nor did the Hills
seem so near to them. So we sat down by
the peat-fire in a shepherd's cottage, and ate
of milk and porridge, and talked with the
man about the ways of that district, and the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span>
hills, and how best to reach them. "If you
want work," he said, "you should go away
south, where the towns are, an' not to these
lonely hills. They are so barren, that even
the goatherds no longer wander their beasts
there."</p>
<p>"It's said they're haunted," added the Body,
seeing that the others did not speak.</p>
<p>"Ay, sure enough. That's well known,
master. An' for the matter o' that, there's a
wood down there to the right where for three
nights past I have seen figures and the gleaming
of fire. But there isn't a soul in that
wood—no, not a wandering tinker. I took
my dogs through it to-day, an' there wasn't
the sign even of a last-year's gypsy. As for
the low bare hill beyond it, not a man, let
alone a woman or child, would go near it in
the dark. In the Gaelic it's called Maol Dè,
that is to say, the Hill of God."</p>
<p>For a long time we sat talking with the
shepherd, for he told us of many things that
were strange, and some that were beautiful,
and some that were wild and terrible. One
of his own brothers, after an evil life, had
become mad, and even now lived in caves among
the higher hills, going ever on hands and feet,
and cursing by day and night because he
was made as one of the wild swine, that know<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span>
only hunger and rage and savage sleep. He
himself tended lovingly his old father, who
was too frail to work, and often could not
sleep at nights because of the pleasant but
wearying noise the fairies made as they met
on the dancing-lawns among the bracken.
Our friend had not himself heard the simple
people, and in a whisper confided to us that
he thought the old man was a bit mazed, and
that what he heard was only the solitary playing
of the <ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both 'Amadan-Dhu' and 'Amadan Dhû' were used in this text. This was retained.">Amadan-Dhu</ins>, who, it was known
to all, roamed the shadows between the two
dusks. "Keep away from the river in the
hollow," he said at another moment, "for
it's there, on a night like this, just before the
full moon got up, that, when I was a boy, I
saw the Aonaran. An' to this day, if I saw
you or any one standing by the water, it 'ud
be all I could do not to thrust you into it
and drown you: ay, I'd have to throw myself
on my face, an' bite the grass, an' pray till my
soul shook the murder out at my throat. For
that's the Aonaran's doing."</p>
<p>Later, he showed us, when we noticed it, a
bit of smooth coral that hung by a coarse
leathern thong from his neck.</p>
<p>"Is that an amulet?" one of us asked.</p>
<p>"No: it's my lassie's."</p>
<p>We looked at the man inquiringly.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span></p>
<p>"The bairn's dead thirty years agone."</p>
<p>In the silence that followed, one of us rose,
and went with the shepherd into the little room
behind. When the man came back it was
with a wonderful light in his face. Our
comrade did not return ... but when we
glanced sidelong, lo, the Soul was there, as
though he had not moved. Then, of a sudden,
we knew what he had done, what he had said,
and were glad.</p>
<p>When we left (the shepherd wanted us to
stay the night, but we would not), the stars
had come. The night was full of solemn
beauty.</p>
<p>We went down by the wood of which the
shepherd had spoken, and came upon it as
the moon rose. But as a path bordered it, we
followed that little winding white gleam,
somewhat impatient now to reach those far
hills where each of us believed he would find
his heart's desire, or, at the least, have that
vision of absolute Truth, of absolute Beauty,
which we had set out to find.</p>
<p>We had not gone a third of the way when
the Body abruptly turned, waving to us a
warning hand. When we stood together silent,
motionless, we saw that we were upon a
secret garden. We were among ilex, and
beyond were tall cypresses, like dark flames<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span>
rising out of the earth, their hither sides lit
with wavering moonfire. Far away the hill-foxes
barked. Somewhere near us in the
dusk an owl hooted. The nested wild doves
were silent. Once, the faint churr of a distant
fern-owl sent a vibrant dissonance, that was yet
strangely soothing, through the darkness and
the silence.</p>
<p>"Look!" whispered the Body.</p>
<p>We saw, on a mossy slope under seven
great cypresses, a man lying on the ground,
asleep. The moonshine reached him as we
looked, and revealed a face of so much beauty
and of so great a sorrow that the heart ached.
Nevertheless, there was so infinite a peace
there, that, merely gazing upon it, our lives
stood still. The moonbeam slowly passed
from that divine face. I felt my breath rising
and falling, like a feather before the mystery of
the wind is come. Then, the further surprised,
we saw that the sleeper was not alone. About
him were eleven others, who also slept;
but of these one sat upright, as though the
watchman of the dark hour, slumbering at his
post.</p>
<p>While the Body stooped, whispering, we
caught sight of the white face of yet another,
behind the great bole of a tree. This man,
the twelfth of that company which was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span>
gathered about the sleeper in its midst, stared,
with uplifted hand. In his other hand, and
lowered to the ground, was a torch. He
stared upon the Sleeper.</p>
<p>Slowly I moved forward. But whether in
so doing, or by so doing, we broke some
subtle spell, which had again made us as one,
I know not. Suddenly three stood in that
solitary place, with none beside us, neither
sleeping nor watching, neither quick nor dead.
Far off the hill-foxes barked. Among the
cypress boughs an owl hooted, and was
still.</p>
<p>"Have we dreamed?" each asked the
other. Then the Body told what he had seen,
and what heard; and it was much as is written
here, only that the sleepers seemed to him
worn and poor men, ill-clad, weary, and that
behind the white face of the twelfth, who hid
behind a tree, was a company of evil men
with savage faces, and fierce eyes, and drawn
swords.</p>
<p>"I have seen nothing of all this," said the
Will harshly, "but only a fire drowning in its
own ashes, round which a maze of leaves
circled this way and that, blown by idle
winds."</p>
<p>The Soul looked at the speaker. He sighed.
"Though God were to sow living fires about<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span>
you, O Will," he said, "you would not
believe."</p>
<p>The Will answered dully: "I have but one
dream, one hope, and that is to believe. Do
not mock me." The Soul leaned and kissed
him lovingly on the brow.</p>
<p>"Look," he said; "what I saw was this: I
beheld, asleep, the Divine Love; not sleeping,
as mortals sleep, but in a holy quiet, brooding
upon infinite peace, and in commune with the
Eternal Joy. Around him were the Nine
Angels, the <i>Crois nan Aingeal</i> of our prayers,
and two Seraphs—the Eleven Powers and
Dominions of the World. And One stared
upon them, and upon Him, out of the dark
wood, with a face white with despair, that
great and terrible Lord of Shadow whom
some call Death, and some Evil, and some
Fear, and some the Unknown God. Behind
him was a throng of demons and demoniac
creatures: and all died continually. And
the wood itself—it was an infinite forest;
a forest of human souls awaiting
God."</p>
<p>The Will listened, with eyes strangely
ashine. Suddenly he fell upon his knees, and
prayed. We saw tears falling from his
eyes.</p>
<p>"I am blind and deaf," he whispered in the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span>
ear of the Body, as he rose; "but, lest I forget,
tell me where I am, in what place we
are."</p>
<p>"It is a garden called Gethsemane," answered
the other—though I know not how he knew—I—we—as
we walked onward in silence
through the dusk of moon and star, and saw
the gossamer-webs whiten as they became
myriad, and hang heavy with the pale glister
of the dews of dawn.</p>
<h3><br />IX</h3>
<p>The morning twilight wavered, and it was as
though an incalculable host of grey doves
fled upward and spread earthward before a
wind with pinions of rose: then the dappled
dove-grey vapour faded, and the rose hung
like the reflection of crimson fire, and dark
isles of ruby and straits of amethyst
and pale gold and saffron and April-green
came into being: and the new day was
come.</p>
<p>We stood silent. There is a beauty too
great. We moved slowly round by the low
bare hill beyond the wood. No one was
there, but on the summit stood three crosses;
one, midway, so great that it threw a shadow<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span>
from the brow of the East to the feet of the
West.</p>
<p>The Soul stopped. He seemed as one
rapt. We looked upon him with awe, for his
face shone as though from a light within.
"Listen," he whispered, "I hear the singing
of the Sons of Joy. Farewell: I shall come
again."</p>
<p>We were alone, we two. Silently we
walked onward. The sunrays slid through the
grass, birds sang, the young world that is so
old smiled: but we had no heed for this.
In that new solitude each almost hated the
other. At noon a new grief, a new terror,
came to us. We were upon a ridge, looking
westward. There were no hills anywhere.</p>
<p>Doubtless the Soul had gone that way which
led to them. For us ... they were no longer
there.</p>
<p>"Let us turn and go home," said the Body
wearily.</p>
<p>The Will stood and thought.</p>
<p>"Let us go home," he said.</p>
<p>With that he turned, and walked hour
after hour. It was by a road unknown to us,
for, not noting where we went, we had
traversed a path that led us wide of that by
which we had come. At least we saw nothing
of it. Nor, at dusk, would the Will go<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span>
further, nor agree even to seek for a path
that might lead to the garden called Gethsemane.</p>
<p>"We are far from it," he said, "if indeed
there be any such place. It was a dream,
and I am weary of all dreams. When we
are home again, O Body, we will dream no
more."</p>
<p>The Body was silent, then abruptly
laughed. His comrade looked at him curiously.</p>
<p>"Why do you laugh?"</p>
<p>"Did you not say there would be no more
tears? And of that I am glad."</p>
<p>"You did not laugh gladly. But what I said
was that there shall be no more dreams for us,
that we will dream no more."</p>
<p>"It is the same thing. We have tears
because we dream. If we hope no more, we
dream no more: if we dream no more, we
weep no more. And I laughed because of
this: that if we weep no more we can live as
we like, without thought of an impossible
to-morrow, and with little thought even for
to-day."</p>
<p>For a time we walked in brooding thought,
but slowly, because of the gathering dark.
Neither spoke, until the Body suddenly stood
still, throwing up his arms.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span></p>
<p>"Oh, what a fool I have been! What a fool
I have been!"</p>
<p>The Will made no reply. He stared before
him into the darkness.</p>
<p>We had meant to rest in the haven of the
great oaks, but a thin rain had begun, and we
shivered with the chill. The thought came to
us to turn and find our way back to the house
of the shepherd, hopeless as the quest might
prove, for we were more and more bewildered
as to where we were, or even as to the direction
in which we moved, being without pilot of
moon or star, and having already followed
devious ways. But while we were hesitating,
we saw a light. The red flame shone steadily
through the rainy gloom, so we knew that it
was no lantern borne by a fellow-wayfarer. In
a brief while we came upon it, and saw that it
was from a red lamp burning midway in a forest
chapel.</p>
<p>We lifted the latch and entered. There was
no one visible. Nor was any one in the sacristy.
We went to the door again, and looked vainly
in all directions for light which might reveal a
neighbouring village, or hamlet, or even a
woodlander's cottage.</p>
<p>Glad as we were of the shelter, and of the
glow from the lamp, a thought, a dream, a
desire, divided us. We looked at each other<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span>
sidelong, each both seeking and avoiding the
other's eyes.</p>
<p>"I cannot stay here," said the Body at last;
"the place stifles me. I am frightened to stay.
The path outside is clear and well trodden; it
must lead somewhere, and as this chapel is
here, and as the lamp is lit, a village, or at least
a house, cannot be far off."</p>
<p>The Will looked at him.</p>
<p>"Do not go," he said earnestly.</p>
<p>"Why?"</p>
<p>"I do not know. But do not let us part. I
dare not leave here. I feel as though this were
our one safe haven to-night."</p>
<p>The Body moved to the door and opened it.</p>
<p>"I am going. And—and—I am going, too,
because I am tired both of you and the Soul.
There is only one way for me, I see, and I go
that way. Farewell."</p>
<p>The door closed. The Will was alone. For
a few moments he stood, smiling scornfully.
With a sudden despairing gesture he ran to
the door, flung it open, and peered into the
darkness.</p>
<p>He could see no one; could hear no steps.
His long beseeching cry was drowned among
these solitudes. Slowly he re-closed the door;
slowly walked across the stone flags; and
with folded arms stood looking upon the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span>
altar, dyed crimson with the glow from the
great lamp which hung midway in the nave.</p>
<p>There was a choir-stall to the right. Here
he sat, for a time glad merely to be at rest.</p>
<p>Soon all desire of sleep went from him, and
he began to dream. At this he smiled: it was
so brief a while ago since he had said he would
dream no more.</p>
<p>Away now from his two lifelong comrades,
and yet subtly connected with them, and living
by and through each, he felt a new loneliness.
Life could be very terrible. Life ... the
word startled him. What life could there be
for him if the Body perished? That was why
he had cried out in anguish after his comrade
had left, with that ominous word "farewell."
True, now he lived, breathed, thought, as
before: but this, he knew, was by some inexplicable
miracle of personality, by which the
three who had been one were each enabled to
go forth, fulfilling, and in all ways ruled and
abiding by, the natural law. If the Body should
die, would he not then become as a breath
in frost? If the Soul ... ah! he wondered
what then would happen.</p>
<p>"When I was with the Body," he
muttered, "I was weary of dreams, or longed
only for those dreams which could be fulfilled
in action. But now ... now it is<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span>
different. I am alone. I must follow my own
law. But what ... how ... where ...
am I to choose? All the world is a wilderness
with a heart of living light. The side
we see is Life: the side we do not see we call
Hope. All ways—a thousand myriad ways—lead
to it. Which shall I choose? How shall
I go?"</p>
<p>Then I began to dream ... I ... we ...
then the Will began to dream.</p>
<p>Slowly the Forest Chapel filled with a vast
throng, ever growing more dense as it became
more multitudinous, till it seemed as though
the walls fell away and that the aisles
reached interminably into the world of shadow,
through the present into the past, and to dim
ages.</p>
<p>Behind the altar stood a living Spirit,
most wonderful, clothed with Beauty and
Terror.</p>
<p>Then the Will saw, understood, that this
was not the Christ, nor yet the Holy Spirit,
but a Dominion. It was the Spirit of this
world, one of the Powers and Dominions
whom of old men called the gods. But all
in that incalculable throng worshipped this
Spirit as the Supreme God. He saw, too, or
realised, that, to those who worshipped, this
Spirit appeared differently, now as a calm<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span>
and august dreamer, now as an inspired warrior,
now as a man wearing a crown of thorns
against the shadow of a gigantic cross: as the
Son of God, or the Prophet of God, or in manifold
ways the Supreme One, from Jehovah to
the savage Fetich.</p>
<p>Turning from that ocean of drowned life,
he looked again at the rainbow-plumed and
opal-hued Spirit: but now he could see no
one, nothing, but a faint smoke that rose as
from a torch held by an invisible hand. The
altar stood unserved.</p>
<p>Nor was the multitude present. The myriad
had become a wavering shadow, and was no
more.</p>
<p>A child had entered the church. The little
boy came slowly along the nave till he stood
beneath the red lamp, so that his white robe
was warm with its glow. He sang, and the
Will thought it was a strange song to hear in
that place, and wondered if the child were
not an image of what was in his own heart.</p>
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">When the day darkens,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">When dusk grows light,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">When the dew is falling,<br /></span>
<span class="i2">When Silence dreams ...<br /></span>
<span class="i0">I hear a wind<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Calling, calling<br /></span>
<span class="i0">By day and by night.</span>
</div>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span></p>
<div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">What is the wind<br /></span>
<span class="i0">That I hear calling<br /></span>
<span class="i0">By day and by night,<br /></span>
<span class="i2">The crying of wind?<br /></span>
<span class="i0">When the day darkens,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">When dusk grows light,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">When the dew is falling?</span>
</div></div>
<p>The Will rose and moved towards the child.
No one was there, but he saw that a wind-eddy
blew about the altar, for a little cloud of
rose-leaves swirled above it. As in a dream he
heard a voice, faint and sweet:—</p>
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">Out of the Palace<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Of Silence and Dreams<br /></span>
<span class="i0">My voice is falling<br /></span>
<span class="i2">From height to height:<br /></span>
<span class="i0">I am the Wind<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Calling, calling<br /></span>
<span class="i0">By day and by night.</span>
</div></div>
<p>The red flame waned and was no more.
Above the altar a white flame, pure as an opal
burning in moonfire, rose for a moment, and
in a moment was mysteriously gathered into
the darkness.</p>
<p>Startled, the Will stood moveless in the
obscurity. Were these symbols of the end—the
red flame and the white ... the Body and
the Soul?</p>
<p>Then he remembered the ancient wisdom<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span>
of the Gael, and went out of the Forest Chapel
and passed into the woods. He put his lips
to the earth, and lifted a green leaf to his brow,
and held a branch to his ear: and because
he was no longer heavy with the sweet
clay of mortality, though yet of the human
clan, he heard that which we do not hear, and
saw that which we do not see, and knew that
which we do not know. All the green life
was his. In that new world he saw the lives
of trees, now pale green, now of woodsmoke
blue, now of amethyst: the grey lives of stone:
breaths of the grass and reed: creatures
of the air, delicate and wild as fawns, or
swift and fierce and terrible, tigers of that
undiscovered wilderness, with birds almost
invisible but for their luminous wings, their
opalescent crests.</p>
<p>With these and the familiar natural life,
with every bird and beast kindred and knowing
him kin, he lived till the dawn, and from
the dawn till sunrise, and from sunrise till
noon. At noon he slept. When he woke he
saw that he had wandered far, and was glad
when he came to a woodlander's cottage.
Here a woman gave him milk and bread, but
she was dumb, and he could learn nothing
from her. She showed him a way which he
followed; and by that high upland path, before<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span>
<ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both 'sun-down' and 'sundown' were used in this text. This was retained.">sundown</ins>, he came again upon the Forest
Chapel, and saw that it stood on a spur of blue
hills.</p>
<p>Were it not for a great and startling weakness
that had suddenly come upon him, he would
have gone in search of his lost comrade.
While he lay with his back against a tree,
vaguely wondering what ill had come upon
him, he heard a sound of wheels. Soon after
a rough cart was driven rapidly towards the
Forest Chapel, but when the countryman saw
him he reined in abruptly, as though at once
recognising one whom he had set out to seek.
"Your friend is dying," he said; "come at
once if you want to see him again. He sent
me to look for you."</p>
<p>In a moment all lassitude and pain went
from the Will, and he sprang into the cart,
asking (while his mind throbbed with a
dreadful anxiety) many questions. But all
he could learn from his taciturn companion
was that yester eve his comrade had fallen
in with a company of roystering and loose
folk, with whom he had drunk heavily over-night
and gamed and lived evilly; that all
this day he had lain as in a stupor, till the
afternoon, when he awoke and straightway
fell into a quarrel about a woman, and, after
fierce words and blows, had been mortally<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span>
wounded with a knife. He was now lying,
almost in the grasp of death, at the Inn of the
Crossways.</p>
<p>In the whirl of anxiety, dread, and a new
and terrible confusion, the Will could not think
clearly as to what he was to say or do, what
was to be or could be done for his friend.
And while he was still swayed helplessly,
this way and that, as a herring in a net drifted
to and fro by wind and wave, the Inn was
reached.</p>
<p>With stumbling eagerness he mounted the
rough stairs, and entered a small room, clean,
though almost sordid in its bareness, yet
through its western window filled with the
solemn light of sunset.</p>
<p>On a white bed lay the Body, and the Will
saw at a glance that his comrade had not
long to live. The handkerchief the sufferer
held on his breast was stained with the
bright crimson of the riven lungs; his
white face was whiter than the pillow, the
more so, as a red splatch lay on each
cheek.</p>
<p>The dying man opened his eyes as the door
opened. He smiled gladly when he saw who
had come.</p>
<p>"I am glad indeed of this," he whispered.
"I feared I was to die alone, and in delirium<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span>
or unconsciousness. Now I shall not be alone
till the end. And then——"</p>
<p>But here the Will sank upon his knees by
the bedside. For a few minutes his tears fell
upon the hand he clasped. The sobs shook
in his throat. He had never fully realised
what love he bore his comrade, his second
self; how interwrought with him were all his
joys and sorrows, his interests, his hopes and
fears.</p>
<p>Suddenly, with supplicating arms, he cried,
"Do not die! Oh, do not die! Save me, save
me, save me!"</p>
<p>"How can I save you, how can I help you,
dear friend?" asked the Body in a broken
voice; "my sand is all but run out; my hour
is come."</p>
<p>"But do you not know, do you not see, that
I cannot live without you!—that I must <i>die</i>—that
if you perish so must I also pass with your
passing breath!"</p>
<p>"No—no—no!—for, see, we are no longer
one, but three. The Soul is far from us now,
and soon you too will be gone on your own
way. It is only I who can go no more into
the beautiful dear world. O Will, if I could,
I would give all your knowledge and endless
quest of wisdom and all your hopes, and all
the dreams and the white faith of the Soul,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span>
for one little year of sweet human life—for
one month even—ah, what do I say, for a few
days even, for a day, for a few hours! It is so
terrible thus to be stamped out. Yesterday I
saw a dog leaping and barking in delight as it
raced about a wagon, and then in a moment a
foot caught and it was entangled, and the
wagon-wheel crushed it into a lifeless mass.
There was no dog; for that poor beast it was
the same as though it had never been, as
though the world had never been, as though
nothing more was to be. He was a breath
blown unremembering out of nothing into
nothing. That is what death is. That is what
death is, O Will!"</p>
<p>"No, no, it is too horrible—too cruel—too
unjust."</p>
<p>"Yes, for you. But not for me. Your
way is not the way of death, but of life. For
me, I am as the beasts are, their sorry lord,
but akin—oh yes, akin, akin. I follow the
natural law in all things. And I know this
now, dear comrade: that without you and the
Soul I should have been no other than
the brutes that know nothing save their
innocent lusts and live and die without
thought."</p>
<p>The Will slowly rose.</p>
<p>"It was madness for us to separate and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span>
come upon this quest," he said, looking longingly
at the Body.</p>
<p>"Not so, dear friend. We should have
had to separate soon or late, whatsoever we
had done. If I have feared you at times, and
turned from you often, I have loved you well,
and still more the Soul. I think you have
both lied to me overmuch, and you mostly.
But I forgive what I know was done in love
and hope. And you, O Will, forgive me for
all I have brought, what I now bring, upon
you; forgive the many thwartings and dull
indifference and heavy drag I have so often,
oh, so often been to you. For now death is
at hand. But I have one thing I wish to ask
you."</p>
<p>"Speak."</p>
<p>"Before my life was broken, there was
one whom I loved. Every hope, every dream,
every joy, every sorrow that I had came from
this love. It was her death which broke my
life—not only for the piteous loss and all it
meant to me, but because death came with
tragic heedlessness—for she was young, and
strong, and beautiful. And before she died,
she said we should meet again. I was never,
and now am far the less worthy of her; and
yet—and yet—oh, if only that great, beautiful
love were all I had to doubt or fear, I should<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span>
have no doubt or fear! But no—no—we
shall never meet. How can we? Before
to-morrow I shall be like that crushed dog,
and not be: just as if I had never been!"</p>
<p>The blood rose, and sobs and tears made
further words inaudible. But after a little the
Body spoke again.</p>
<p>"But you, O Will, you and the Soul both
resemble me. We are as flowers of the same
colour, as clay of the same mould. It may be
you shall meet her. Tell her that my last
thought was of her: take her all my dreams
and hopes—and say—and say—say——"</p>
<p>But here the Body sat up in the bed, ash-white,
with parted lips and straining eyes.</p>
<p>"What? Quick, quick, dear Body—say?——"</p>
<p>"Say that I loved best that in her which I
loved best in myself—the Soul. Tell her I
have never wholly despaired. Ah, if only the
Soul were here, I would not even now despair!
Tell her I leave all to the Soul—and—and—love
shall triumph——"</p>
<p>There was a rush of blood, a gurgling cry,
and the Body sank back lifeless. In the very
moment of death the eyes lightened with a
wonderful radiance—it was as though the
evening stars suddenly came through the
dark.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span></p>
<p>The Will looked to see whence it came.
The Soul stood beside him, white, wonderful,
radiant.</p>
<p>"I have come," he said.</p>
<p>"For me?" said the Will, shaking as with an
ague, yet in bitter irony.</p>
<p>"Yes, for you, and for the Body too."</p>
<p>"For the Body?—see, he is already clay.
What word have you to say to <i>that</i>, to <i>me</i>
who likewise am already perishing?</p>
<p>"This—do you remember what so brief a
while ago we three as one wrote—wrote with
my spirit, through your mind, and the Body's
hand—these words: <i>Love is more great than
we conceive, and Death is the keeper of unknown
redemptions?</i>"</p>
<p>"Yes—yes—O Soul! I remember, I
remember."</p>
<p>"It was true there: it is true here. Have I
not ever told you that Love would save?"</p>
<p>With that the Soul moved over to the bedside,
and kissed the Body.</p>
<p>"Farewell, fallen leaf. But the tree lives—and
beyond the tree is the wind, the breath of
the eternal."</p>
<p>"Look," he added, "our comrade is still
asleep, though now no mortal skill could
nourish the hidden spark"; and with that he
stooped and kissed again the silent lips and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span>
the still brow and the pulseless heart, and
suddenly a breath, an essence, came from the
body, in form like itself, a phantom, yet endued
with a motion of life.</p>
<p>As the faintest murmur in a shell we heard
him whisper, <i>Life! Life! Life!</i> Then, as a
blown vapour, he was one with us. A singular
change came upon the clay which had once
been so near and dear to us: a frozen whiteness
that had not been there before, a stillness as of
ancient marble.</p>
<p>The Will stood, appalled, with wild eyes.
Some dreadful invisible power was upon him.</p>
<p>"Lost!" he cried; and now his voice, too,
was faint as a murmur in a shell. But the Soul
smiled.</p>
<p>Then the Will grew grey as a willow-leaf
aslant in the wind; and as the shadow of a
reed wavered in the wind; and as a reed's
shadow is and is not, so was he suddenly no
more.</p>
<p>But, in the miracle of a moment, the Soul
appeared in the triple mystery of substance,
and mind, and spirit. In full and joyous life
the Will stood <ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both 're-born' and 'reborn' were used in this text. This was retained.">re-born</ins>, and now we three were
one again.</p>
<p>I looked for the last time on that which had
been our home. The lifeless thing lay, most
terribly still and strange; yet with a dignity<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span>
that came as a benediction, for this dead temple
of life had yielded to a divine law, allied
not to shadow and decay, but to the recurrent
spring, to the eternal ebb and flow, to the
infinite processional. It is we of the human
clan only who are troubled by the vast waste
and refuse of life. There is not any such waste,
neither in the myriad spawn nor the myriad
seed: a Spirit sows by the law we do not see,
and reaps by a law we do not know.</p>
<p>Then I turned and went to the western
window. I saw that the Inn stood upon the
Hills of Dream, yet, when I looked within,
I knew that I was again in my familiar home.
Once more, beyond the fuchsia bushes, the
sea sighed, as it felt the long shore with a
continuous foamless wave. In the little room
below, the lamp was lit; for the glow fell
warmly upon the gravel path, shell-bordered,
and upon the tufted mignonette, sea-pinks, and
feathery southernwood. The sound of hushed
voices rose.</p>
<p>And now the dawn is come, and I have
written this record of what we, who are now
indeed one, but far more truly and intimately
than before, went out to seek. In another
hour I shall go hence, a wayfarer again. I
have a long road to travel, but am sustained
by joy, and uplifted by a great hope. When,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span>
tired, I lay down the pen, and with it the last
of mortal uses, it will be to face the glory of
a new day. I have no fear. I shall not leave
all I have loved, for I have that in me which
binds me to this beautiful world, for another
life at least, it may be for many lives. And
that within me which dreamed and hoped
shall now more gladly and wonderfully
dream, and hope, and seek, and know, and see
ever deeper and further into the mystery
of beauty and truth. And that within me
which <i>knew</i>, now <i>knows</i>. In the deepest sense
there is no spiritual dream that is not true,
no hope that shall for ever go famished,
no tears that shall not be gathered into the
brooding skies of compassion, to fall again in
healing dews.</p>
<p>What the Body could not, nor ever could
see, and what to the Will was a darkness, or
at best a bewildering mist, is now clear.
There are mysteries of which I cannot write;
not from any occult secret, but because they
are so simple and inevitable, that, like the
mystery of day and night, or the change of the
seasons, or life and death, they must be learned
by each, in his own way, in his own hour.
It is not out of their light that I see; it is
by these stars that I set forth, where else I
should be as a shadow upon a trackless waste.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span></p>
<p>But Love, I am come to realise, is the
supreme deflecting force. Love "unloosens
sins," unites failure, disintegrates the act;
not by an inconceivable conflict with the immutable
law of consequence, but by deflection.
For the divine love follows the life, and turns
and meets it at last, and in that meeting deflects:
so that that which is mortal, evil, and
what is of the mortal law, the act, sinks; and
on the forehead of the divine law that which
is alone inevitable survives and moves onward
in the rhythm that is life. When we understand
the mystery of Redemption, we shall
understand what Love is. The expiatory is an
unknown attribute in the Divine. Expiation
is but the earthly burnt-offering of that
in us that is mortal: Redemption, which is
the spiritual absorption of the expiation due
to others, and the measureless restitution in
love of wrong humbly brought to the soul
and consumed there—so that it issues a living
force to meet and deflect—is the living witness
in that of us which is immortal. Those who
wrong us do indeed become our saviours.
It is <i>their</i> expiation that we make <i>ours</i>: they
must go free of us; and when they come
again and discrown us, then in love we
shall be at one and equal. So far, words
may clothe thought; but, beyond, the soul<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span>
knows there is no expiation. Except you
redeem yourself, there is no God. Forgiveness
is the dream of little children: beautiful
because thus far we see and know, but no
farther.</p>
<p>I see now what madness it was, as so often
happened, to despise the body. But one
mystery has become clear to me through this
strange quest of ours—though when I say
"I," or "our," I know not whether it is the
Body or the Will or the Soul that speaks,
till I remember that triune marriage at the
deathbed, and know that while each is consciously
each—the one with memory, the
other with knowledge and hope, the third
with wisdom and faith—we are yet one, as
are the yellow and the white and the violet
in the single flame in this candle beside me.
And this mystery is, that the body was not
built of life-warmed clay merely to be the
house of the soul. Were it so, were the soul
unwed to its mortal comrades, it would be no
more than a moment's uplifted wave on an
infinite sea. Without memory, without hope,
it would be no more than a breath of the
Spirit. But before the Divine Power moulded
us into substance, we were shaped by it in
form. And form is, in the spiritual law, what
the crystal is in the chemic law.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span></p>
<p>For now I see clearly that the chief end of
the body is to enable the soul to come into
intimate union with the natural law, so that
it may fulfil the divine law of Form, and be
at one with all created life and yet be for
ever itself and individual. By itself the soul
would only vainly aspire; it has to learn to
remember, to become at one with the wind
and the grass and with all that lives and
moves; to take its life from the root of the
body, and its green life from the mind, and
its flower and fragrance from what it may of
itself obtain, not only from this world, but
from its own dews, its own rainbows, dawn
stars and evening stars, and vast incalculable
fans of time and death. And this I have
learned: that there is no absolute Truth, no
absolute Beauty, even for the Soul. It may
be that in the Divine Forges we shall be so
moulded as to have perfect vision. Meanwhile
only that Truth is deepest, that Beauty
highest which is seen, not by the Soul only,
or by the Mind, or by the Body, but all three
as one. Let each be perfect in kind and perfect
in unity. This is the signal meaning of
the mystery. It is so inevitable that it has its
blind descent to fetich as well as its divine
ascension. But the ignoble use does not
annul the noble purport, any more than<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span>
the blindness of many obscures the dream of
one.</p>
<p>There could be no life hereafter for the
soul were it not for the body, and what were
that life without the mind, the child of both,
whom the ancient seers knew and named
Mnemosynê? Without memory life would be
a void breath, immortality a vacuum.</p>
<p>Ah, the glory of the lifting light! The new
day is come. Farewell.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span></p>
<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span></p>
<h2>IONA</h2>
<div class="blockquot"><p>"<i>There are moments when the soul takes wings:
what it has to remember, it remembers: what it loves,
it loves still more: what it longs for, to that it flies.</i>"</p></div><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span></p>
<hr style="width: 65%;" />
<h2>Iona</h2>
<p>A few places in the world are to be held holy,
because of the love which consecrates them and
the faith which enshrines them. Their names
are themselves talismans of spiritual beauty. Of
these is Iona.</p>
<p>The Arabs speak of Mecca as a holy place
before the time of the prophet, saying that
Adam himself lies buried here: and, before
Adam, that the Sons of Allah, who are called
Angels, worshipped; and that when Allah
Himself stood upon perfected Earth it was on
this spot. And here, they add, when there is
no man left upon earth, an angel shall gather
up the dust of this world, and say to Allah,
"There is nothing left of the whole earth but
Mecca: and now Mecca is but the few grains
of sand that I hold in the hollow of my palm,
O Allah."</p>
<p>In spiritual geography Iona is the Mecca of
the Gael.</p>
<p>It is but a small isle, fashioned of a little
sand, a few grasses salt with the spray of an<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span>
ever-restless wave, a few rocks that wade in
heather and upon whose brows the sea-wind
weaves the yellow lichen. But since the
remotest days sacrosanct men have bowed
here in worship. In this little island a lamp
was lit whose flame <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'lighed'">lighted</ins> pagan Europe, from
the Saxon in his fens to the swarthy folk who
came by Greek waters to trade the Orient.
Here Learning and Faith had their tranquil
home, when the shadow of the sword lay
upon all lands, from Syracuse by the Tyrrhene
Sea to the rainy isles of Orcc. From age to
age, lowly hearts have never ceased to bring
their burthen here. Iona herself has given
us for remembrance a fount of youth more
wonderful than that which lies under her
own boulders of Dûn-I. And here Hope
waits.</p>
<p>To tell the story of Iona is to go back to God,
and to end in God.</p>
<p><br />But to write of Iona, there are many ways
of approach. No place that has a spiritual
history can be revealed to those who know
nothing of it by facts and descriptions. The
approach may be through the obscure glens
of another's mind and so out by the moonlit
way, as well as by the track that thousands
travel. I have nothing to say of Iona's acreage,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span>
or fisheries, or pastures: nothing of how
the islanders live. These things are the accidental.
There is small difference in simple life
anywhere. Moreover, there are many to tell
all that need be known.</p>
<p>There is one Iona, a little island of the
west. There is another Iona, of which I
would speak. I do not say that it lies open
to all. It is as we come that we find. If we
come, bringing nothing with us, we go away
ill-content, having seen and heard nothing of
what we had vaguely expected to see or hear.
It is another Iona than the Iona of sacred
memories and prophecies: Iona the metropolis
of dreams. None can understand it who
does not see it through its pagan light, its
Christian light, its singular blending of
paganism and romance and spiritual beauty.
There is, too, an Iona that is more than Gaelic,
that is more than a place rainbow-lit with the
seven desires of the world, the Iona that, if we
will it so, is a mirror of your heart and of
mine.</p>
<p>History may be written in many ways, but
I think that in days to come the method of
spiritual history will be found more suggestive
than the method of statistical history.
The one will, in its own way, reveal inward
life, and hidden significance, and palpable<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span>
destiny: as the other, in the good but
narrow way of convention, does with exactitude
delineate features, narrate facts, and relate
events. The true interpreter will as little
despise the one as he will claim all for the
other.</p>
<p>And that is why I would speak here of
Iona as befalls my pen, rather than as perhaps
my pen should go: and choose legend and
remembrance, and my own and other memories
and associations, and knowledge of my own
and others, and hidden meanings, and beauty
and strangeness surviving in dreams and
imaginations, rather than facts and figures, that
others could adduce more deftly and with more
will.</p>
<p><br />In the <i>Félire na Naomh Nerennach</i> is a
strangely beautiful if fantastic legend of one
Mochaoi, Abbot of <ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both 'n'Aondruim' and 'n'-Aondruim' were used in this text. This was retained.">n'-Aondruim</ins> in Uladh.
With some companions he was at the edge
of a wood, and while busy in cutting wattles
wherewith to build a church, "he heard a
bright bird singing on the blackthorn near
him. It was more beautiful than the birds
of the world." Mochaoi listened entranced.
There was more in that voice than in the
throat of any bird he had ever heard, so he
stopped his wattle-cutting, and, looking at the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span>
bird, courteously asked who was thus delighting
him. The bird at once answered,
"A man of the people of my Lord" (that is,
an angel). "Hail," said Mochaoi, "and for
why that, O bird that is an angel?" "I am
come here by command to encourage you in
your good work, but also, because of the love
in your heart, to amuse you for a time with
my sweet singing." "I am glad of that," said
the saint. Thereupon the bird sang a single
surpassing sweet air, and then fixed his
beak in the feathers of his wing, and slept.
But Mochaoi heard the beauty and sweetness
and infinite range of that song for three hundred
years. Three hundred years were in
that angelic song, but to Mochaoi it was less
than an hour. For three hundred years he
remained listening, in the spell of beauty:
nor in that enchanted hour did any age come
upon him, or any withering upon the wattles
he had gathered; nor in the wood itself did a
single leaf turn to a red or yellow flame
before his eyes. Where the spider spun her
web, she spun no more: where the dove
leaned her grey breast from the fir, she leaned
still.</p>
<p>Then suddenly the bird took its beak from
its wing-feathers, and said farewell. When
it was gone, Mochaoi lifted his wattles, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span>
went homeward as one in a dream. He stared,
when he looked for the little wattled cells of
the Sons of Patrick. A great church built of
stone stood before his wondering eyes. A
man passed him, and told the stranger that it
was the church of St. Mochaoi. When he
spoke to the assembled brothers, none knew
him: some thought he had been taken away
by the people of the Shee, and come back at
fairy-nightfall, which is the last hour of the
last day of three hundred years. "Tell us
your name and lineage," they cried. "I am
Mochaoi, Abbot of <ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both 'n'Aondruim' and 'n'-Aondruim' were used in this text. This was retained.">n'-Aondruim</ins>," he said,
and then he told his tale, and they knew him,
and made him abbot again. In the enchanted
wood a shrine was built, and about it a church
grew, "and surpassingly white angels often
alighted there, or sang hymns to it from
the branches of the forest trees, or leaned
with their foot on tiptoe, their eyes on
the horizon, their ear on the ground, their
wings flapping, their bodies trembling, waiting
to send tidings of prayer and repentance
with a beat of their wings to the King of the
Everlasting."</p>
<p>There are many who thought that
Mochaoi was dead, when he was seen no
more of his fellow-monks at the forest
monastery of <ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both 'n'Aondruim' and 'n'-Aondruim' were used in this text. This was retained.">n'Aondruim</ins> in Uladh. But his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span>
chronicler knew: "a sleep without decay of
the body Mochaoi of Antrim slept."</p>
<p>I am reminded of the story of Mochaoi
when I think of Iona. I think she too, beautiful
isle, while gathering the help of human
longing and tears and hopes, strewn upon her
beaches by wild waves of the world, stood,
enchanted, to listen to a Song of Beauty.
"That is a new voice I hear in the wave,"
we can dream of her saying, and of the answer:
"we are the angelic flocks of the Shepherd:
we are the Voices of the Eternal: listen a
while!"</p>
<p>It has been a long sleep, that enchanted
swoon. But Mochaoi awoke, after three
hundred years, and there was neither time
upon his head, nor age in his body, nor a
single withered leaf of the forest at his feet.
And shall not that be possible for the Isle of
Dreams, whose sands are the dust of martyrs
and noble and beautiful lives, which was
granted to one man by "one of the people of
my Lord?"</p>
<p><br />When I think of Iona I think often, too, of a
prophecy once connected with Iona; though
perhaps current no more in a day when prophetical
hopes are fallen dumb and blind.</p>
<p>It is commonly said that, if he would be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span>
heard, none should write in advance of his
times. That I do not believe. Only, it does
not matter how few listen. I believe that
we are close upon a great and deep spiritual
change. I believe a new redemption is even
now conceived of the Divine Spirit in the
human heart, that is itself as a woman, broken
in dreams, and yet sustained in faith, patient,
long-suffering, looking towards home. I
believe that though the Reign of Peace may
be yet a long way off, it is drawing near: and
that Who shall save us anew shall come
divinely as a Woman, to save as Christ saved,
but not, as He did, to bring with Her a sword.
But whether this Divine Woman, this Mary
of so many passionate hopes and dreams,
is to come through mortal birth, or as an
immortal Breathing upon our souls, none can
yet know.</p>
<p>Sometimes I dream of the old prophecy
that Christ shall come again upon Iona, and
of that later and obscure prophecy which
<ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both 'foretell' and 'fortell' were used in this text. This was retained.">foretells</ins>, now as the Bride of Christ, now as
the Daughter of God, now as the Divine
Spirit embodied through mortal birth in a
Woman, as once through mortal birth in a
Man, the coming of a new Presence and
Power: and dream that this may be upon
Iona, so that the little Gaelic island may<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span>
become as the little Syrian Bethlehem. But
more wise it is to dream, not of hallowed
ground, but of the hallowed gardens of the
soul wherein She shall appear white and
radiant. Or, that upon the hills, where we
are wandered, the Shepherdess shall call us
home.</p>
<p>From one man only, on Iona itself, I have
heard any allusion to the prophecy as to the
Saviour who shall yet come: and he in part
was obscure, and confused the advent of Mary
into the spiritual world with the possible
coming again to earth of Mary, as another
Redeemer, or with a descending of the
Divine Womanhood upon the human heart as
a universal spirit descending upon awaiting
souls. But in intimate remembrance I recall
the words and faith of one or two whom
I loved well. Nor must I forget that my
old nurse, Barabal, used to sing a strange
"oran," to the effect that when St. Bride
came again to Iona it would be to bind the
hair and wash the feet of the Bride of
Christ.</p>
<p>One of those to whom I allude was a young
Hebridean priest, who died in Venice, after
troubled years, whose bitterest vicissitude was
the clouding of his soul's hope by the
wings of a strange multitude of dreams—one<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span>
of whom and whose end I have elsewhere
written: and he told me once how, "as our
forefathers and elders believed and still believe,
that Holy Spirit shall come again which
once was mortally born among us as the Son
of God, but, then, shall be the Daughter of
God. The Divine Spirit shall come again as
a Woman. Then for the first time the world
will know peace." And when I asked him if
it were not prophesied that the Woman is to
be born in Iona, he said that if this prophecy
had been made it was doubtless of an Iona
that was symbolic, but that this was a matter
of no moment, for She would rise suddenly in
many hearts, and have her habitation among
dreams and hopes. The other who spoke to
me of this Woman who is to save was an old
fisherman of a remote island of the Hebrides,
and one to whom I owe more than to any
other spiritual influence in my childhood, for
it was he who opened to me the three gates of
Beauty. Once this old man, Seumas Macleod,
took me with him to a lonely haven in the
rocks, and held me on his knee as we sat
watching the sun sink and the moon climb out
of the eastern wave. I saw no one, but
abruptly he rose and put me from him, and
bowed his grey head as he knelt before one
who suddenly was standing in that place. I<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span>
asked eagerly who it was. He told me that
it was an Angel. Later, I learned (I remember
my disappointment that the beautiful
vision was not winged with great white
wings) that the Angel was one soft flame of
pure white, and that below the soles of his
feet were curling scarlet flames. He had
come in answer to the old man's prayer. He
had come to say that we could not see the
Divine One whom we awaited. "But you
will yet see that Holy Beauty," said the Angel,
and Seumas believed, and I too believed, and
believe. He took my hand, and I knelt
beside him, and he bade me repeat the words
he said. And that was how I first prayed
to Her who shall yet be the Balm of the
World.</p>
<p>And since then I have learned, and do see,
that not only prophecies and hopes, and
desires unclothed yet in word or thought,
<ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both 'foretell' and 'fortell' were used in this text. This was retained.">foretell</ins> her coming, but already a multitude
of spirits are in the gardens of the soul, and
are sowing seed and calling upon the wind of
the south; and that everywhere are watching
eyes and uplifted hands, and signs which
cannot be mistaken, in many lands, in many
peoples, in many minds; and, in the heaven
itself that the soul sees, the surpassing
signature.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span></p>
<p>I recall one whom I knew, a fisherman of
the little green island: and I tell this story
of Coll here, for it is to me more than the
story of a dreaming islander. One night,
lying upon the hillock that is called Cnoc-nan-Aingeal,
because it is here that St. Colum
was wont to hold converse with an angel
out of heaven, he watched the moonlight
move like a slow fin through the sea: and
in his heart were desires as infinite as the
waves of the sea, the moving homes of the
dead.</p>
<p>And while he lay and dreamed, his thoughts
idly adrift as a net in deep waters, he closed
his eyes, muttering the Gaelic words of an
old line,</p>
<p><i>In the Isle of Dreams God shall yet fulfil Himself anew</i>.</p>
<p>Hearing a footfall, he stirred. A man stood
beside him. He did not know the man, who
was young, and had eyes dark as hill-tarns,
with hair light and soft as thistledown; and
moved light as a shadow, delicately treading
the grass as the wind treads it. In his hair
he had twined the fantastic leaf of the horn-poppy.</p>
<p>The islander did not move or speak: it was
as though a spell were upon him.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span></p>
<p>"God be with you," he said at last, uttering
the common salutation.</p>
<p>"And with you, Coll mac Coll," answered
the stranger. Coll looked at him. Who was
this man, with the sea-poppy in his hair, who,
unknown, knew him by name? He had heard
of one whom he did not wish to meet, the
Green Harper: also of a grey man of the sea
whom islesmen seldom alluded to by name:
again, there was the <ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both 'Amadan-Dhu' and 'Amadan Dhû' were used in this text. This was retained.">Amadan Dhû</ins> ... but at
that name Coll made the sign of the cross, and
remembering what Father Allan had told him
in South Uist, muttered a holy exorcism of the
Trinity.</p>
<p>The man smiled.</p>
<p>"You need have no fear, Coll mac Coll," he
said quietly.</p>
<p>"You that know my name so well are welcome,
but if you in turn would tell me your name I
should be glad."</p>
<p>"I have no name that I can tell you,"
answered the stranger gravely; "but I am not
of those who are unfriendly. And because you
can see me and speak to me, I will help you to
whatsoever you may wish."</p>
<p>Coll laughed.</p>
<p>"Neither you nor any man can do that.
For now that I have neither father nor
mother, nor brother nor sister, and my lass<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span>
too is dead, I wish neither for sheep nor cattle,
nor for new nets and a fine boat, nor a big
house, nor as much money as MacCailein Mòr
has in the bank at Inveraora."</p>
<p>"What then do you wish for, Coll mac
Coll?"</p>
<p>"I do not wish for what cannot be, or I
would wish to see again the dear face of Morag,
my lass. But I wish for all the glory and
wonder and power there is in the world, and to
have it all at my feet, and to know everything
that the Holy Father himself knows, and have
kings coming to me as the crofters come to
MacCailein Mòr's factor."</p>
<p>"You can have that, Coll mac Coll," said the
Green Harper, and he waved a withe of hazel
he had in his hand.</p>
<p>"What is that for?" said Coll.</p>
<p>"It is to open a door that is in the air. And
now, Coll, if that is your wish of all wishes, and
you will give up all other wishes for that wish,
you can have the sovereignty of the world.
Ay, and more than that: you shall have the
sun like a golden jewel in the hollow of your
right hand, and all the stars as pearls in your
left, and have the moon as a white shining
opal above your brows, with all knowledge
behind the sun, within the moon, and beyond
the stars."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span></p>
<p>Coll's face shone. He stood, waiting. Just
then he heard a familiar sound in the dusk.
The tears came into his eyes.</p>
<p>"Give me instead," he cried, "give me a
warm breast-feather from that grey dove of
the woods that is winging home to her
young." He looked as one moon-dazed. None
stood beside him. He was alone. Was it a
dream, he wondered? But a weight was
lifted from his heart. Peace fell upon him as
dew upon grey pastures. Slowly he walked
homeward. Once, glancing back, he saw a
white figure upon the knoll, with a face noble
and beautiful. Was it Colum himself come
again? he mused: or that white angel with
whom the Saint was wont to discourse, and
who brought him intimacies of God? or was
it but the wave-fire of his dreaming mind, as
lonely and cold and unreal as that which the
wind of the south makes upon the wandering
hearths of the sea?</p>
<p>I tell this story of Coll here, for, as I have
said, it is to me more than the story of a
dreaming islander. He stands for the soul of
a race. It is because, to me, he stands for
the sorrowful genius of our race, that I have
spoken of him here. Below all the strife of
lesser desires, below all that he has in common
with other men, he has the livelong<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span>
unquenchable thirst for the things of the spirit.
This is the thirst that makes him turn so often
from the near securities and prosperities,
and indeed all beside, setting his heart aflame
with vain, because illimitable, desires. For
him, the wisdom before which knowledge is
a frosty breath: the beauty that is beyond
what is beautiful. For, like Coll, the world
itself has not enough to give him. And at
the last, and above all, he is like Coll in this,
that the sun and moon and stars themselves
may become as trampled dust, for only a
breast-feather of that Dove of the Eternal,
which may have its birth in mortal love, but
has its evening home where are the dews of
immortality.</p>
<p><br />"The Dove of the Eternal." It was from
the lips of an old priest of the Hebrides that I
first heard these words. I was a child, and
asked him if it was a white dove, such
as I had seen fanning the sunglow in Icolmkill.</p>
<p>"Yes," he told me, "the Dove is white, and
it was beloved of Colum, and is of you, little
one, and of me."</p>
<p>"Then it is not dead?"</p>
<p>"It is not dead."</p>
<p>I was in a more wild and rocky isle than<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span>
Iona then, and when I went into a solitary
place close by my home it was to a stony
wilderness so desolate that in many moods I
could not bear it. But that day, though there
were no sheep lying beside boulders as grey
and still, nor whinnying goats (creatures
that have always seemed to me strangely
homeless, so that, as a child, it was often my
noon-fancy on hot days to play to them on a
little reed-flute I was skilled in making,
thwarting the hill-wind at the small holes to
the fashioning of a rude furtive music, which
I believed comforted the goats, though why
I did not know, and probably did not try to
know): and though I could hear nothing but
the soft, swift, slipping feet of the wind
among the rocks and grass and a noise of the
tide crawling up from a shore hidden behind
crags (beloved of swallows for the small
honey-flies which fed upon the thyme): still,
on that day, I was not ill at ease, nor in any
way disquieted. But before me I saw a white
rock-dove, and followed it gladly. It flew
circling among the crags, and once I thought
it had passed seaward; but it came again, and
alit on a boulder.</p>
<p>I went upon my knees, and prayed to it,
and, as nearly as I can remember, in these
words:<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span>—</p>
<p>"O Dove of the Eternal, I want to love
you, and you to love me: and if you live on
Iona, I want you to show me, when I go
there again, the place where Colum the Holy
talked with an angel. And I want to live as
long as you, Dove" (I remember thinking this
might seem disrespectful, and that I added
hurriedly and apologetically), "Dove of the
Eternal."</p>
<p>That evening I told Father Ivor what I had
done. He did not laugh at me. He took me
on his knee, and stroked my hair, and for a
long time was so silent that I thought he was
dreaming. He put me gently from him,
and kneeled at the chair, and made this simple
prayer which I have never forgotten: "O
Dove of the Eternal, grant the little one's
prayer."</p>
<p>That is a long while ago now, and I have
sojourned since in Iona, and there and
elsewhere known the wild doves of thought
and dream. But I have not, though I have
longed, seen again the White Dove that Colum
so loved. For long I thought it must have
left Iona and Barra too, when Father Ivor
died.</p>
<p>Yet I have not forgotten that it is not dead.
"I want to live as long as you," was my
child's plea: and the words of the old priest,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span>
knowing and believing were, "O Dove of the
Eternal, grant the little one's prayer."</p>
<p><br />It was not in Barra, but in Iona, that, while
yet a child, I set out one evening to find the
Divine Forges. A Gaelic sermon, preached
on the shoreside by an earnest man, who, going
poor and homeless through the west, had
tramped the long roads of Mull over against
us, and there fed to flame a smouldering fire,
had been my ministrant in these words. The
"revivalist" had spoken of God as one who
would hammer the evil out of the soul and
weld it to good, as a blacksmith at his anvil:
and suddenly, with a dramatic gesture, he
cried: "This little island of Iona is this anvil;
God is your blacksmith: but oh, poor people,
who among you knows the narrow way to the
Divine Forges?"</p>
<p>There is a spot on Iona that has always
had a strange enchantment for me. Behind
the ruined walls of the Columban church,
the slopes rise, and the one isolated hill of
Iona is, there, a steep and sudden wilderness.
It is commonly called Dûn-I (<i>Doon-ee</i>), for at
the summit in old days was an island fortress;
but the Gaelic name of the whole of
this uplifted shoulder of the isle is Slibh
Meanach. Hidden under a wave of heath<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span>
and boulder, near the broken rocks, is a little
pool. From generation to generation this has
been known, and frequented, as the Fountain
of Youth.</p>
<p>There, through boggy pastures, where the
huge-horned shaggy cattle stared at me, and up
through the ling and roitch, I climbed: for, if
anywhere, I thought that from there I might
see the Divine Forges, or at least might discover
a hidden way, because of the power of that
water, touched on the eyelids at sunlift, at
sunset, or at the rising of the moon.</p>
<p>From where I stood I could see the people
still gathered upon the dunes by the shore,
and the tall, ungainly figure of the preacher.
In the narrow strait were two boats, one
being rowed across to Fionnaphort, and the
other, with a dun sail burning flame-brown,
hanging like a bird's wing against Glas
Eilean, on the tideway to the promontory of
Earraid. Was the preacher still talking of
the Divine Forges? I wondered; or were
the men and women in the ferry hurrying
across to the Ross of Mull to look for them
among the inland hills? And the Earraid
men in the fishing-smack: were they sailing
to see if they lay hidden in the wilderness of
rocks, where the muffled barking of the seals
made the loneliness more wild and remote?<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span></p>
<p>I wetted my eyelids, as I had so often
done before (and not always vainly, though
whether vision came from the water, or from
a more quenchless spring within, I know
not), and looked into the little pool. Alas!
I could see nothing but the reflection of a
star, too obscured by light as yet for me to
see in the sky, and, for a moment, the shadow
of a gull's wing as the bird flew by far overhead.
I was too young then to be content
with the symbols of coincidence, or I might
have thought that the shadow of a wing from
Heaven, and the light of a star out of the
East, were enough indication. But, as it
was, I turned, and walked idly northward,
down the rough side of Dun Bhuirg (at Cul
Bhuirg, a furlong westward, I had once seen
a phantom, which I believed to be that of
the Culdee, Oran, and so never went that
way again after <ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both 'sun-down' and 'sundown' were used in this text. This was retained.">sundown</ins>) to a thyme-covered
mound that had for me a most singular fascination.</p>
<p>It is a place to this day called Dûn Mananain.
Here, a friend who told me many
things, a Gaelic farmer named Macarthur,
had related once a fantastic legend about a
god of the sea. Manaun was his name, and
he lived in the times when Iona was part of
the kingdom of the Suderöer. Whenever he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span>
willed he was like the sea, and that is not
wonderful, for he was born of the sea. Thus
his body was made of a green wave. His
hair was of wrack and tangle, glistening with
spray; his robe was of windy foam; his feet,
of white sand. That is, when he was with
his own, or when he willed; otherwise, he
was as men are. He loved a woman of the
south so beautiful that she was named Dèar-sadh-na-Ghréne
(Sunshine). He captured
her and brought her to Iona in September,
when it is the month of peace. For one
month she was happy: when the wet gales
from the west set in, she pined for her own
land: yet in the dream-days of November,
she smiled so often that Manaun hoped; but
when Winter was come, her lover saw that
she could not live. So he changed her into
a seal. "You shall be a sleeping woman by
day," he said, "and sleep in my dûn here on
Iona: and by night, when the dews fall, you
shall be a seal, and shall hear me calling to
you from a wave, and shall come out and
meet me."</p>
<p>They have mortal offspring also, it is
said.</p>
<p>There is a story of a man who went to the
mainland, but could not see to plough, because
the brown fallows became waves that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span>
splashed noisily about him. The same man
went to Canada, and got work in a great
warehouse; but among the bales of merchandise
he heard the singular note of the sandpiper,
and every hour the <ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both 'sea-fowl' and 'seafowl' were used in this text. This was retained.">sea-fowl</ins> confused
him with their crying.</p>
<p>Probably some thought was in my mind
that there, by Dûn Mananain, I might find
a hidden way. That summer I had been
thrilled to the inmost life by coming suddenly,
by moonlight, on a seal moving across the
last sand-dune between this place and the
bay called Port Ban. A strange voice, too, I
heard upon the sea. True, I saw no white
arms upthrown, as the seal plunged into the
long wave that swept the shore; and it was
a grey skua that wailed above me, winging
inland; yet had I not had a vision of the
miracle?</p>
<p>But alas! that evening there was not even
a barking seal. Some sheep fed upon the
green slope of Manaun's mound.</p>
<p><br />So, still seeking a way to the Divine
Forges, I skirted the shore and crossed the
sandy plain of the Machar, and mounted the
upland district known as Sliav Starr (the Hill
of Noises), and walked to a place, to me
sacred. This was a deserted green <ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both 'airidh' and 'àiridh' were used in this text. This was retained.">airidh</ins><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span>
between great rocks. From here I could
look across the extreme western part of
Iona, to where it shelved precipitously around
the little Port-na-Churaich, the Haven of the
Coracle, the spot where St. Columba landed
when he came to the island.</p>
<p>I knew every foot of ground here, as every
cave along the wave-worn shore. How often
I had wandered in these solitudes, to see
the great spout of water rise through the
grass from the caverns beneath, forced upward
when tide and wind harried the sea-flocks
from the north; or to look across the ocean
to the cliffs of Antrim, from the Carn cul
Ri Eirinn, the Cairn of the Hermit King of
Ireland, about whom I had woven many a
romance.</p>
<p>I was tired, and fell asleep. Perhaps the
Druid of a neighbouring mound, or the
lonely Irish King, or Colum himself (whose
own Mound of the Outlook was near), or one
of his angels who ministered to him, watched,
and shepherded my dreams to the desired
fold. At least I dreamed, and thus:—</p>
<p>The skies to the west beyond the seas were
not built of flushed clouds, but of transparent
flame. These flames rose in solemn stillness
above a vast forge, whose anvil was the shining
breast of the sea. Three great Spirits<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span>
stood by it, and one lifted a soul out of the
deep shadow that was below; and one with
his hands forged the soul of its dross and
welded it anew; and the third breathed upon
it, so that it was winged and beautiful.
Suddenly the glory-cloud waned, and I saw
the multitude of the stars. Each star was
the gate of a long, shining road. Many—a
countless number—travelled these roads. Far
off I saw white walls, built of the pale gold
and ivory of sunrise. There again I saw the
three Spirits, standing and waiting. So these,
I thought, were not the walls of Heaven, but
the Divine Forges.</p>
<p>That was my dream. When I awaked, the
curlews were crying under the stars.</p>
<p>When I reached the shadowy glebe, behind
the manse by the sea, I saw the preacher
walking there by himself, and doubtless praying.
I told him I had seen the Divine Forges,
and twice; and in crude, childish words told
how I had seen them.</p>
<p>"It is not a dream," he said.</p>
<p>I know now what he meant.</p>
<p><br />It would seem to be difficult for most of
us to believe that what has perished can be
<ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both 're-born' and 'reborn' were used in this text. This was retained.">reborn</ins>. It is the same whether we look
upon the dust of ancient cities, broken<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span>
peoples, nations that stand and wait, old
faiths, defeated dreams. It is so hard to
believe that what has fallen may arise. Yet
we have perpetual symbols; the tree, that the
winds of Autumn ravage and the Spring
restores; the trodden weed, that in April
awakes white and fragrant; the swallow, that
in the south remembers the north. We
forget the ebbing wave that from the sea-depths
comes again: the Day, shod with
sunrise while his head is crowned with
stars.</p>
<p>Far-seeing was the vision of the old Gael,
who prophesied that Iona would never
wholly cease to be "the lamp of faith," but
would in the end shine forth as gloriously as
of yore, and that, after dark days, a new hope
would go hence into the world. But before
that (and he prophesied when the island was
in its greatness)—</p>
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">"Man tig so gu crich<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Bithidh I mar a bha,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Gun a ghuth mannaich<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Findh shalchar ba...."</span>
</div></div>
<p>quaint old-world Erse words, which mean—</p>
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">"Before this happens,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Iona will be as it was,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Without the voice of a monk,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Under the dung of cows."<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a></span>
</div><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span></p></div>
<p>And truly enough the little island was for
long given over to the sea-wind, whose
mournful chant even now fills the ruins where
once the monks sang matins and evensong;
for generations, sheep and long-horned shaggy
kine found their silent pastures in the wilderness
that of old was "this our little seabounded
Garden of Eden."</p>
<p>But now that Iona has been "as it was," the
other and greater change may yet be, may well
have already come.</p>
<p>Strange, that to this day none knows with
surety the derivation or original significance
of the name Iona. Many ingenious guesses
have been made, but of these some are
obviously far-fetched, others are impossible in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span>
Gaelic, and all but impossible to the mind
of any Gael speaking his ancient tongue.
Nearly all these guesses concern the Iona of
Columba: few attempt the name of the sacred
island of the Druids. Another people once
lived here with a forgotten faith; possibly
before the Picts there was yet another, who
worshipped at strange altars and bowed down
before Shadow and Fear, the earliest of the
gods.</p>
<p>The most improbable derivation is one that
finds much acceptance. When Columba and
his few followers were sailing northward from
the isle of Oronsay, in quest, it is said, of this
sacred island of the Druids, suddenly one
of the monks cried <i>sud i</i> (<i>? siod e!</i>) "yonder
it!" With sudden exultation Columba exclaimed,
<i>Mar sud bithe I, goir thear II</i>, "Be
it so, and let it be called I" (I or EE). We
are not the wiser for this obviously monkish
invention. It accounts for a syllable only,
and seems like an effort to explain the use
of <i>I</i> (II, Y, Hy, Hee) for "island" in place
of the vernacular Innis, Inch, Eilean, etc.
Except in connection with Iona I doubt if <i>I</i>
for island is ever now used in modern Gaelic.
Icolmkill is familiar: the anglicised Gaelic
of the Isle of Colum of the Church. But
it is doubtful if any now living has ever<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span>
heard a Gael speak of an island as <i>I</i>; I doubt
if an instance could be adduced. On the
other hand, <i>I</i> might well have been, and
doubtless is, used in written speech as a sign
for Innis, as <i>'s</i> is the common writing of
<i>agus</i>, and. As for the ancient word <i>Idh</i> or <i>Iy</i>
I do not know that its derivation has been
ascertained, though certain Gaelic linguists
claim that <i>Idh</i> and Innis are of the same root.</p>
<p>I do not know on what authority, but an
anonymous Gaelic writer, in an account of
Iona in 1771, alludes to the probability that
Christianity was introduced there before St.
Columba's advent, and that the island was
already dedicated to the Apostle St. John,
"for it was originally called <i>I'Eoin</i>, i.e. the
Isle of John, whence Iona." <i>I'eoin</i> certainly
is very close in sound, as a Gael would pronounce
it, to Iona, and there can be little
doubt that the island had druids (whether
Christian monks also with or without) when
Columba landed. Before Conall, King of
Alba (as he was called, though only Dalriadic
King of Argyll), invited Colum to Iona, to
make that island his home and sanctuary,
there were certainly Christian monks on the
island. Among them was the half-mythical
Odran or Oran, who is chronicled in the
<i>Annals of the Four Masters</i> as having been<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span>
a missionary priest, and as having died in
Iona fifteen years before Colum landed.
Equally certainly there were druids at this late
date, though discredited of the Pictish king
and his people, for a Cymric priest of the old
faith was at that time Ard-Druid. This man
Gwendollen, through his bard or second-druid
Myrddin (Merlin), deplored the persecution
to which he was subject, in that now he and
his no longer dared to practise the sacred
druidical rites "in raised circles"—adding
bitterly, "the grey stones themselves, even,
they have removed."</p>
<p>Again, Davies in his <i>Celtic Researches</i> speaks
of Colum as having on his settlement in
Iona burnt a heap of druidical books. It
is at any rate certain that druidical believers
(helots perhaps) remained to Colum's time,
even if the last druidic priest had left. In
the explicit accounts which survive there is
no word of any dispossession of the druidic
priests. It is more than likely that the Pictish
king, who had been converted to Christianity,
and gave the island to Columba by special
grant, had either already seen Irish monks
inhabit it, or at least had withdrawn the
lingering priests of the ancient faith of his
people. Neither Columba nor Adamnan nor
any other early chronicler speaks of Iona<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span>
as held by the Druids when the little coracle
with the cross came into Port-na-Churaich.</p>
<p>Others have derived the name from <i>Aon</i>,
an isthmus, but the objections to this are that
it is not applicable to the island, and perhaps
never was; and, again, the Gaelic pronunciation.
Some have thought that the word,
when given as <i>I-Eoin</i>, was intended, not
for the Isle of John, but the Isle of Birds.
Here, again, the objection is that there is no
reason why Iona should be called by a
designation equally applicable to every one of
the numberless isles of the west. To the
mountaineers of Mull, however, the little low-lying
seaward isle must have appeared the haunt
of the myriad <ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both 'sea-fowl' and 'seafowl' were used in this text. This was retained.">sea-fowl</ins> of the Moyle; and if
the name thus derives, doubtless a Mull man
gave it.</p>
<p>Again, it is said that Iona is a miswriting
of <i>Ioua</i>, "the avowed ancient name of the
island." It is easy to see how the scribes who
copied older manuscripts might have made
the mistake; and easy to understand how,
the mistake once become the habit, fanciful
interpretations were adduced to explain
"Iona."</p>
<p>There is little reasonable doubt that <i>Ioua</i>
was the ancient Gaelic or Pictish name of the
island. I have frequently seen allusions to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span>
its having been called Innis nan Dhruidnechean,
or Dhruidhnean, the Isle of the
Druids: but that is not ancient Gaelic, and I
do not think there is any record of Iona being
so called in any of the early manuscripts.
Doubtless it was a name given by the Shenachies
or bardic story-tellers of a later date,
though of course it is quite possible that
Iona was of old commonly called the Isle of
the Druids. In this connection I may put on
record that a few years ago I heard an old
man of the western part of the Long Island
(Lewis), speak of the priests and ministers
of to-day as "druids"; and once, in either
Coll or Tiree, I heard a man say, in English,
alluding to the Established minister, "Yes,
yes, that will be the way of it, for sure, for
Mr. —— is a wise druid." It might well
be, therefore, that in modern use the Isle of
Druids signified only the Isle of Priests.
There is a little island of the Outer Hebrides
called Innis Chailleachan Dhubh—the isle of
the black old women; and a legend has
grown up that witches once dwelt here and
brewed storms and evil spells. But the name
is not an ancient name, and was given not so
long ago, because of a small sisterhood of
black-cowled nuns who settled there.</p>
<p>St. Adamnan, ninth Abbot of Iona, writing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span>
at the end of the seventh century, invariably
calls the island <i>Ioua</i> or the <i>Iouan
Island</i>. Unless the hypothesis of the careless
scribes be accepted, this should be conclusive.</p>
<p>For myself I do not believe that there has
been any slip of <i>n</i> for <i>u</i>. And I am confirmed
in this opinion by the following circumstance.
Three years ago I was sailing
on one of the sea-lochs of Argyll. My only
companion was the boatman, and incidentally
I happened to speak of some skerries (a
group of sea-set rocks) off the Ross of Mull,
similarly named to rocks in the narrow kyle
we were then passing; and learned with
surprise that my companion knew them well,
and was not only an Iona man, but had lived
on the island till he was twenty. I asked him
about his people, and when he found that I
knew them he became more confidential.
But he professed a strange ignorance of all
concerning Iona. There was an old Iona
iorram, or boat-song, I was anxious to have:
he had never heard of it. Still more did I
desire some rendering or even some lines of
an ancient chant of whose existence I knew,
but had never heard recited, even fragmentarily.
He did not know of it: he "did not
know Gaelic," that is, he remembered only a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span>
little of it. Well, no, he added, perhaps he
did remember some, "but only just to talk
to fishermen an' the like."</p>
<p>Suddenly a squall came down out of the
hills. The loch blackened. In a moment a
froth of angry foam drove in upon us, but
the boat righted, and we flew before the blast,
as though an arrow shot by the wind. I
noticed a startling change in my companion.
His blue eyes were wide and luminous; his
lips twitched; his hands trembled. Suddenly
he stooped slightly, laughed, cried some
words I did not catch, and abruptly broke
into a fierce and strange sea-chant. It was
no other than the old Iona rann I had so
vainly sought!</p>
<p>Some memory had awakened in the man,
perhaps in part from what I had said—with
the old spell of the sea, the old cry of the
wind.</p>
<p>Then he ceased abruptly, he relapsed, and
with a sheepish exclamation and awkward
movement shrank beside me. Alas, I could
recall only a few lines; and I failed in every
effort to persuade him to repeat the rann.
But I had heard enough to excite me, for
again and again he had called or alluded to
Iona by its ancient pre-Columban name of
Ioua, and once at least I was sure, from the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span>
words, that the chant was also to Ioua the
Moon.</p>
<p>That night, however, he promised to tell
me on the morrow all he could remember of
the old Ioua chant. On the morrow, alas, he
had to leave upon an unexpected business
that could not be postponed, and before his
return, three days later, I was gone. I have
not seen him again, but it is to him I am indebted
for the loan of an ancient manuscript
map of Iona, a copy of which I made and
have by me still. It was an heirloom: by his
own account had been in his family, in Iona,
for seven generations, "an it's Himself knows
how much more." He had been to the
island the summer before, because of his
father's death, and had brought this coarsely
painted and rudely framed map away with
him. He told me too, that night, how the
oldest folk on the island—"some three or
four o' them, anyway; them as has the
Gaelic"—had the old Ioua chant in their
minds. As a boy he had heard it at many
a winter <i>ceilidh</i>. "Ay, ay, for sure, Iona
was called Ioua in them old ancient days."</p>
<p>My friend also had a little book of his
mother's which contained, in a neat hand,
copies of Gaelic songs, among them some of
the old Islay and Skye oar-chants of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span>
<i>iorram</i> kind. I recall an iorram that had
hardly a word in it, but was only a series
of barbaric cries, sometimes full of lament
(<i>hò-ro-aroo-aròne</i>, <i>ho-ro</i>, <i>ah-hòne</i>, <i>ah-hòne</i>!),
which was the Iona fisherman's song to entice
seals to come near. I remember, too, the
opening of a "<ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both 'maighdean-mhara' and 'Maigh-deann-M'hara' were used in this text. This was retained.">maighdean-mhara</ins>" or mermaid
song, by a little-known namesake of my
own, a sister of Mary Macleod, "the sweet
singer of the Hebrides," because it had as a
heading (perhaps put there by the Iona
scribe) some lines of Mary's that I liked well.</p>
<p>I quote from memory, but these were to
the effect that, in his home, what the Macleod
loved, was playing at chess</p>
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<i><span class="i0">Agus fuaim air a <ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both 'chlarsach' and 'chlarsaich' were used in this text. This was retained.">chlarsaich</ins><br /></span>
<span class="i0">Gus e h'eachdraidh na dheigh sin<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Greis air ursgeul na Fèine</span></i>
</div></div>
<p>[<i>and the music of the harp, and the telling of
tales of the feats of the <ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both 'Fèinn' and 'Féinn' were used in this text. This was retained.">Féinn</ins></i> (the Fingalians).]
There are not many now, I fear, who could
find entertainment thus, or care to sit before
the peat-fires.</p>
<p>On one other occasion I have heard the
name Ioua used by a fisherman. I was at
Strachnr, on Loch Fyne, and was speaking to
the skipper of a boat's crew of Macleods from<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span>
the Lews, when I was attracted by an old
man. He knew my Uist friend, then at
Strachur, who told me more than one strange
legend of the <ins title="Transcriber's Note: 'Sliochd-nan-Ron,' 'Sliochd nan Ron,' and 'Sliochd-nan-ròn' were used in this text. This was retained.">Sliochd-nan-Ron</ins>, the seal-men.
I met the old man that night before the peat-glow,
and while he was narrating a story of
a Princess of Spain who married the King of
Ireland's son, he spoke incidentally of their
being wrecked on Iona, "that was then called
Ioua, ay, an' that for one hundred and two
hundred and three hundred years and thrice
a hundred on the top o' that before it was
Icolmkill."</p>
<p>I did not know him, but a friend told me
that the late Mr. Cameron, the minister of
Brodick, in Arran, had the <span class="smcap">M.S.</span> of an old Iona
(or Hebridean) iorram, in the refrain of which
<i>Ioua</i> was used throughout.</p>
<p>Neither do I think the name the island now
bears has anything in common with <i>Ioua</i>.
In a word, I am sure that the derivations of
Iona are commonly fanciful, and that the
word is simply Gaelic for the Isle of Saints,
and was so given it because of Columba and
the abbots and monks who succeeded him
and his. In Gaelic, the letters <i>sh</i> at the
beginning of a word are invariably mute; so
that <i>I-shona</i>, the Isle of Saints, would be
pronounced <i>Iona</i>. I think that any lingering<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span>
doubt I had about the meaning of the name
went when I got the old map of which I have
spoken, and found that in the left corner was
written in large rude letters <i>II-SHONA</i>.</p>
<p><br />How great a man was the Irish monk
Crimthan, called Colum, the Dove: Columcille,
the Dove of the Church. One may read
all that has been written of him since the
sixth century, and not reach the depths of his
nature. I doubt if any other than a Gael can
understand him aright. More than any Celt
of whom history tells, he is the epitome of
the Celt. In war, Cuchullin himself was not
more brave and resourceful. Finn, calling
his champions to the pursuit of Grania, or
<ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both 'Oìsin' and 'Oisìn' were used in this text. This was retained.">Oìsin</ins> boasting of the Fianna before Patrick,
was not more arrogant, yet his tenderness
could be as his Master's was, and he could
be as gentle as a young mother with her
child, and had a child's simplicity. He knew
the continual restlessness of his race. He
was forty-two when he settled in Iona, and
had led a life of frequent and severe vicissitude,
often a wanderer, sometimes with blood
against him and upon his head, once in
extremity of danger, an outlaw, excommunicated.
But even in his haven of Iona he
was not content. He journeyed northward<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span>
through the Pictish realms, a more dangerous
and obscure adventure then than to cross
Africa to-day. He sailed to "the Ethican
island" as St. Adamnan calls Tiree, and made
of it a sanctuary, where prayer might rise as
a continual smoke from quiet homes. No fear
of the savage clans of Skye—where a woman
had once reigned with so great a fame in war
that even the foremost champion of Ireland
went to her in his youth to learn arms and
battle-wisdom—restrained him from facing
the island Picts. Long before Hakon the
Dane fought the great seafight off Largs on
the mainland, Colum had built a church
there. In the far Perthshire wilds, before
Macbeth slew Duncan the king, the strong
abbot of Iona had founded a monastery in
that thanedom. At remote Inbhir Nis, the
Inverness of to-day, he overcame the King
of the Picts and his sullen Druids, by his
daring, the fierce magnetism of his will, his
dauntless resource. Once, in a savage region,
far north-eastward, towards the Scandinavian
sea, he was told that there his Cross would not
long protect either wattled church or monk's
cell: on that spot he built the monastery of
Deir, that stood for a thousand years, and
whose priceless manuscript is now one of the
treasures of Northumbria.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span></p>
<p>Columba was at once a saint, a warrior, a
soldier of Christ, a great abbot, a dauntless
explorer, and militant Prince of the Church;
and a student, a man of great learning, a
poet, an artist, a visionary, an architect,
administrator, law-maker, judge, arbiter. As
a youth this prince, for he was of royal blood,
was so beautiful that he was likened to an
angel. In mature manhood, there was none
to equal him in stature, manly beauty, strength,
and with a voice so deep and powerful that
it was like a bell and could be heard on
occasion a mile away, and once, indeed, at
the court of King Bruidh, literally overbore
and drowned a concerted chorus of sullen
druids. These had tried to outvoice him
and his monks, little knowing what a mighty
force the sixty-fourth Psalm could be in the
throat of this terrible Culdee, who to them
must have seemed much more befitting his
house-name, Crimthan (Wolf), than "the
Dove"!</p>
<p>This vocal duel was a characteristic device
of the Druids. I recall one notable instance
long before Colum's time, though the <i>Leabhar
na H'Uidhre</i> in which it is to be found
was not compiled till <span class="smcap">A.D.</span> 1000. In the story
of the love of Connla, son of Conn of the
Hundred Battles, for a woman of the other<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span>
world, a druid asks her whence she has come,
and when she answers that it is from the lands
of those who live a beautiful and deathless life,
he knows that she is a woman of the <i><ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both 'Sìdhe' and 'Sidhe' were used in this text. This was retained.">Sidhe</ins></i>. So
he chants against the fair woman till the spell
of her voice is overcome, and she goes away as
a mist that falls on the shore, as a Hebridean
poet would say.<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a></p>
<p>Later, she comes again, and now invisible
to all save Connla. Conn the king hears her
chanting to Connla that it is no such lofty
place he holds "amid short-lived mortals
awaiting fearful death" that he need dread
to leave it, "the more as the ever-living ones
invite thee to be the ruler over Tethra (a
Kingdom of Joy)." So once more the king
calls upon the Ard-Druid to dispel the woman
by his incantations. For a moment Connla
wavers, but the Fairy Woman, with a music
of mockery, sings to him that Druidism is
in ill-favour "over yonder," little loved and
little honoured "there," for, in effect, the
nations of the Shee do not need that idle
dream. Connla's longing is more great to
him than his kingdom or the fires of home,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span>
and he goes with his leannanshee in a boat, till
those on the strand see him dimly and then no
more in that <ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both 'sun-down' and 'sundown' were used in this text. This was retained.">sundown</ins> glow, nor ever again.
Columba, a poet and scholar familiar with the
old tables of his beloved Eiré, probably did
not forget on occasion to turn this druidic tale
against Druidism itself, repeating how, in its
own time, before the little bell of the tonsured
folk was heard in Ireland (so little a bell to be
the tocsin of fallen gods and broken nations),
"Druidism is not loved, for little has it
progressed to honour on the great Righteous
Strand."</p>
<p><br />For one thing of great Gaelic import,
Columba has been given a singular pre-ëminence—not
for his love of country, pride of
race, passionate loyalty to his clan, to every
blood-claim and foster-claim, and friendship-claim,
though in all this he was the very
archetype of the clannish Gael—but because
(so it is averred) he was the first of our race
of whom is recorded the systematic use of the
strange gift of spiritual foresight, "second-sight."
It has been stated authoritatively that
he is the first of whom there is record as
having possessed this faculty; but that could
only be averred by one ignorant of ancient
Gaelic literature. Even in Adamnan's chronicle,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span>
within some seventy years after the death of
Columba, there is record of others having
this faculty, apart from the perhaps more
purely spiritual vision of his mother Aithnê,
when an angel raimented her with the beauty
of her unborn son, or of his foster-father, the
priest Cruithnechan, who saw the singular
light of the soul about his sleeping pupil, or
of the abbot Brendan who redeemed the saint
from excommunication and perhaps death by
his vision of him advancing with a pillar of
fire before him and an angel on either side.
(When, long years afterwards, Brendan died
in Ireland, Colum in Iona startled his monks
by calling for an immediate celebration of the
Eucharist, because it had been revealed to him
that St. Brendan had gone to the heavenly
fatherland yesternight: "Angels came to meet
his soul: I saw the whole earth illumined
with their glory.") Among others there is
the story of Abbot Kenneth, who, sitting at
supper, rose so suddenly as to leave without
his sandals, and at the altar of his church
prayed for Colum, at that moment in dire
peril upon the sea: the story of Ernan, who,
fishing in the river Fenda, saw the death of
Colum in a symbol of flame: the story of
Lugh mac Tailchan, who, at Cloinfinchoil,
beheld Iona (which he had never visited), and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span>
above it a blaze of angels' wings, and Colum's
soul. In the most ancient tales there is frequent
allusion to what we call second-sight. The
writers alluded to could not have heard of the
warning of the dread Mor-Rigân to Cuchullin
before the fatal strife of the Táin-Bó-Cuailgne;
or Cuchullin's own pre-vision (among a score
as striking) of the hostings and gatherings
on the fatal plain of Muirthemne; or the
Amazonian queen, Scathach's, <ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both 'fore-knowledge' and 'foreknowledge' were used in this text. This was retained.">fore-knowledge</ins>
of the career and early death of the champion
of the Gaels:</p>
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">"(At the last) great peril awaits thee ...<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Alone against a vast herd:<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Thirty years I reckon the length of thy years<br /></span>
<span class="i2">(literally, the strength of thy valour);<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Further than this I do not add;"</span>
</div></div>
<p>or of Deirdre's second-sight, when by the
white cairn on Sliav Fuad she saw the sons
of Usna headless, and Illann the Fair headless
too, but Buimne the Ruthless Red with his
head upon his shoulders, smiling a grim
smile—when she saw over Naois, her beloved,
a cloud of blood—or that, alas, too bitter-true
a foreseeing, when in the Craebh Derg, the
House of the Red Branch, she cried to her
lover and his two brothers that death was at
the door and "grievous to me is the deed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span>
O darling friends—and till the world's end
Emain will not be better for a single night
than it is to-night." Or, again, of that pathetic,
simultaneous death-vision of Bailê the Sweet-Spoken
and Aillinn, he in the north, she in the
south, so that each out of a grief unbearable
straightway died, as told in one of the oldest
as well as loveliest of ancient Gaelic tales, the
<i>Scél Baili Binnbérlaig</i>.</p>
<p>There is something strangely beautiful in
most of these "second-sight" stories of
Columba. The faculty itself is so apt to the
spiritual law that one wonders why it is so
set apart in doubt. It would, I think, be far
stranger if there were no such faculty.</p>
<p>That I believe, it were needless to say,
were it not that these words may be read by
many to whom this quickened inward vision
is a superstition, or a fantastic glorification of
insight. I believe; not only because there is
nothing too strange for the soul, whose vision
surely I will not deny, while I accept what is
lesser, the mind's prescience, and, what is
least, the testimony of the eyes. That I have
cause to believe is perhaps too personal a
statement, and is of little account; but in that
interior wisdom, which is no longer the flicker
of one little green leaf but the light and
sound of a forest, of which the leaf is a part,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span>
I know that to be true, which I should as soon
doubt as that the tide returns or that the sap
rises or that dawn is a ceaseless flashing light
beneath the circuit of the stars. Spiritual
logic demands it.</p>
<p>It would ill become me to do otherwise. I
would as little, however, deny that this inward
vision is sometimes imperfect and untrustworthy,
as I would assert that it is infallible.
There is no common face of good or evil;
and in like fashion the aspect of this so-called
mystery is variable as the lives of those in
whom it dwells. With some it is a prescience,
more akin to instinct than to reason, and
obtains only among the lesser possibilities,
as when one beholds another where in the
body none is; or a scene not possible, there,
in that place; or a face, a meeting of shadows,
a disclosure of hazard or accident, a coming
into view of happenings not yet fulfilled.
With some it is simply a larger sight,
more wide, more deep; not habitual, because
there is none of us who is not subject to
the law of the body; and sudden, because
all tense vision is a passion of the moment.
It is as the lightning, whose sustenance is
sure for all that it has a second's life. With
a few it is a more constant companion, a
dweller by the morning thought, by the noon<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span>
reverie, by the evening dream. It lies upon
the pillow for some: to some it as though
the wind disclosed pathways of the air;
a swaying branch, a dazzle on the wave,
the quick recognition in unfamiliar eyes, is,
for others, sufficient signal. Not that these
accidents of the manner need concern us
much. We have the faculty, or we do not
have it. Nor must we forget that it can be
the portion of the ignoble as well as of those
whose souls are clear. When it is in truth a
spiritual vision, then we are in company of
what is the essential life, that which we call
divine.</p>
<p>It was this that Columba had, this serene
perspicuity. That it was a conscious possession
we know from his own words, for he
gave this answer to one who marvelled:
"Heaven has granted to some to see on
occasion in their mind, clearly and surely, the
whole of earth and sea and sky."</p>
<p>It is not unlikely that in the seventy years
which elapsed between Colum's death and
the writing of that lovely classic of the Church,
Adamnan's <i>Vita St. Columbæ</i>, some stories
grew around the saint's memory which were
rather the tribute of childlike reverence and
love than the actual experiences of the holy
man himself. What then? A field in May<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span>
is not the less a daughter of Spring, because
the cowslip-wreaths found there may have
been brought from little wayward garths
by children who wove them lovingly as they
came.</p>
<p>Many of these strange records are mere
coincidences; others reveal so happy a surety
in the simple faith of the teller that we need
only smile, and with no more resentment than
at a child who runs to say he has found stars
in a wayside pool. Others are rather the keen
insight of a ceaseless observation than the
seeing of an inward sense. But, and perhaps
oftener, they are not inherently incredible. I
do not think our forebears did ill to give haven
to these little ones of faith, rather than to
despise, or to drive them away.</p>
<p>I have already spoken of Columba as another
St. Francis, because of his tenderness
for creatures. I recall now the lovely legend
(for I do not think Colum himself attributed
"second-sight" to an animal) which tells
how the old white pony which daily brought
the milk from the cow-shed to the monastery
came and put its head in the lap of the aged
and feeble abbot, thus mutely to bid farewell.
Let Adamnan tell it: "This creature
then coming up to the saint, and knowing that
his master would soon depart from him, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span>
that he would see his face no more, began to
utter plaintive moans, and, as if a man, to
shed tears in abundance into the saint's lap,
and so to weep, frothing greatly. Which
when the attendant saw, he began to drive
away that weeping mourner. But the saint
forbade him, saying, 'Let him alone? As he
loves me so, let him alone, that into this my
bosom he may pour out the tears of his most
bitter lamentation. Behold, thou, a man, that
hast a soul, yet in no way hast knowledge of
my end save what I have myself shown thee;
but to this brute animal the Master Himself
hath revealed that his master is about to go
away from him.' And so saying, he blessed his
sorrowing servant the horse."</p>
<p>If there be any to whom the aged Colum
comforting the grief of his old white pony is
a matter of disdain or derision, I would not
have his soul in exchange for the dumb
sorrow of that creature. One would fare
further with that sorrow, though soulless,
than with the soul that could not understand
that sorrow.</p>
<p>If one were to quote from Adamnan's
three Books of the Prophecies, Miracles, and
Visions of Columba, there would be another
book. Amid much that is childlike, and a
little that is childish, what store of spiritual<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span>
beauty and living symbol in these three books—the
Book of Prophetic Revelations, the
Book of Miracles of Power, the Book of
Angelic Visitations. But there, as elsewhere,
one must bear in remembrance that, in
spiritual sight, there is symbolic vision as well
as actual vision. When Colum saw his friend
Columbanus (who, unknown to any on Iona,
had set out in his frail coracle from the Isle of
Rathlin) tossed in the surges of Corryvrechan;
or when, nigh Glen Urquhart, he hurried
forward to minister to an old dying Pict "who
had lived well by the light of nature," and
whose house, condition, and end had been
suddenly revealed to him: then we have actual
vision. When Aithnê, his mother, dreamed
that an angel showed her a garment of so
surpassing a loveliness that it was as though
woven of flowers and rainbows, and then
threw it on high, till its folds expanded and
covered every mountain-top from the brows
of Connaught to the feet of the Danish sea,
and so revealed to her what manner of son
she bore within her womb; or when, in the
hour of Colum's death, the aged son of Tailchan
beheld the whole expanse of air flooded with
the blaze of angels' wings, which trembled
with their songs: then we have symbolic
vision. And sometimes we have that which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span>
partakes of each, as when (as Adamnan tells us
in his third book) Colum saw angels standing
upon the rocks on the opposite side of the
Sound which divides Iona from the Ross of
Mull, calling to his soul to cross to them, yet,
as they assembled and beckoned, mysteriously
and suddenly restrained, for his hour was not
come.</p>
<p>And in all actual vision there is gradation;
from what is so common, premonition, to
what is not common, prescience, and to what
is rare, revelation. Thus when the labourers
on Iona looked up from the fields and saw
the aged abbot whom they so loved, borne in
a wagon to give them benediction at seed-sowing,
many among them knew that they
would not see Colum again, and Colum knew
it, and so shared that premonition. And when,
many years before, he and the abbot Comgell,
returning from a futile conference of the
kings Aedh and Aidan, rested by a spring,
concerning which Colum said that the day
would come when it would be filled with
human blood, "because my people, the Hy-Neill,
and the Pictish folk, thy relations
according to the flesh, will wage war by
this fortress of Cethirn close by," Comgell
learned, through Colum's <ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both 'fore-knowledge' and 'foreknowledge' were used in this text. This was retained.">foreknowledge</ins>, of
what did in truth come to pass. Again, when<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span>
Colum bade a brother go three days thence
to the sea-shore on the west side of Iona, and
lie in readiness to help "a certain guest, a
crane to wit, beaten by the winds during long
and circuitous and aerial flights, which will
arrive after the ninth hour of the day, very
weary and sore distressed," and bade him to
lift it and tend it lovingly for three days and
three nights till it should have strength to
return to "its former sweet home," and to do
this out of love and courtesy because "it comes
from our fatherland"—and when all happens
and is done as the saint foretold and commanded,
then we have revelation, the vision
that is absolute, the knowledge that is the
atmosphere of the inevitable. It would take a
book indeed to tell all the stories of Columba's
visionary and prophetic powers. That I write
at this length concerning him, indeed, is because
he is himself Iona. Columba is Christian
Iona, as much as Iona is Icolmkill. I have
often wondered (because of a passage in
Adamnan) if the island be not indeed named
after him, the Dove: for as Adamnan says
incidentally, the name Columba is identical
with the Hebrew name Jonah, also signifying
a Dove, and by the Hebrews pronounced
Iona.</p>
<p>It is enough now to recall that this man, so<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span>
often erring but so human always, in whose
life we see the soul of Iona as in a glass, is
become the archetype of his race, as Iona is
the microcosm of the Gaelic world. That he
came into this life heralded by dreams and
visions, that from his youth onward to old
age he knew every mystery of dream and
vision, and that before and after his death
his soul was revealed to others through dreams
and visions, is but an added hieratic grace:
yet we do well to recall often how these dreams
before and these visions after were angelical,
and nobly beautiful: how there was left of
him, and to his little company, and to us for
remembrance, that last signal vision of a blaze
of angelic wings, more intolerable than the sun
at noon, the tempestuous multitude trembling
with the storm of song.</p>
<p><br />Columba and Oran ... these are the
two great names in Iona. Love and Faith
have made one immortal; the other lives
also, clothed in legend. I am afraid there is
not much definite basis for the popular Iona
legend of Oran. It is now the wont of guides
and others to speak of the <ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both 'Reilig' and 'Réilig' Odhrain were used in this text. This was retained.">Réilig</ins> Odhrain,
Oran's burial-place, as that of Columba's
friend (and victim), but it seems likelier that
the Oran who lies here is he who is spoken<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span>
of in the <i>Annals of the Four Masters</i> as having
died in the year 548, that is fifteen years before
Colum came to the island. This, however,
might well be a mistake: what is more
convincing is that Adamnan never mentions
the episode, nor even the name of Oran, nor
is there mention of him in that book of
Colum's intimate friend and successor, Baithene,
which Adamnan practically incorporated.
On the other hand, the Oran legend is
certainly very old. The best modern rendering
we have of it is that of Mr. Whitley
Stokes in his <i>Three Middle-Irish Homilies</i>, and
readers of Dr. Skene's valuable <i>Celtic Scotland</i>
recollect the translation there redacted.
The episode occurs first in an ancient
Irish life of St. Columba. The legend,
which has crystallised into a popular saying,
"Uir, ùir, air sùil Odhrain! mu'n labhair e
tuille comhraidh"—"Earth, earth on Oran's
eyes, lest he further blab"—avers that three
days after the monk Oran or Odran was
entombed alive (some say in the earth, some
in a cavity), Colum opened the grave, to look
once more on the face of the dead brother,
when to the amazed fear of the monks and
the bitter anger of the abbot himself, Oran
opened his eyes and exclaimed, "There is no
such great wonder in death, nor is Hell what<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span>
it has been described." (Ifrinn, or Ifurin—the
word used—is the Gaelic Hell, the Land
of Eternal Cold.) At this, Colum straightway
cried the now famous Gaelic words, and
then covered up poor Oran again lest he
should blab further of that uncertain world
whither he was supposed to have gone. In
the version given by Mr. Whitley Stokes
there is no mention of Odran's grave having
been uncovered after his entombment. But
what is strangely suggestive is that both in
the oral legend and in that early monkish
chronicle alluded to, Columba is represented
as either suggesting or accepting
immolation of a living victim as a sacrifice
to consecrate the church he intended to
build.</p>
<p>One story is that he received a divine
intimation to the effect that a monk of his
company must be buried alive, and that
Odran offered himself. In the earliest known
rendering "Colum Cille said to his people:
'It is well for us that our roots should go
underground here'; and he said to them, 'It
is permitted to you that some one of you go
under the earth of this island to consecrate it.'
Odran rose up readily, and thus he said: 'If
thou wouldst accept me,' he said, 'I am
ready for that.' ... Odran then went to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span>
heaven. Colum Cille then founded the
Church of Hii."</p>
<p>It would be a dark stain on Columba if
this legend were true. But apart from the
fact that Adamnan does not speak of it or
of Oran, the probabilities are against its
truth. On the other hand, it is, perhaps,
quite as improbable that there was no basis
for the legend. I imagine the likelier basis to
be that a druid suffered death in this fashion
under that earlier Odran of whom there is
mention in the <i>Annals of the Four Masters</i>:
possibly, that Odran himself was the martyr,
and the Ard-Druid the person who had
"the divine intimation." Again, before it be
attributed to Columba, one would have to find
if there is record of such an act having been
performed among the Irish of that day. We
have no record of it. It is not improbable
that the whole legend is a symbolical survival,
an ancient teaching of some elementary
mystery through some real or apparent sacrificial
rite.</p>
<p>Among the people of Iona to-day there is a
very confused idea about St. Oran. To some
he is a saint: to others an evil-doer: some think
he was a martyr, some that he was punished
for a lapse from virtue. Some swear by his
grave, as though it were almost as sacred<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span>
as the Black Stone of Iona: to others, perhaps
most, his is now but an idle name.</p>
<p>By the Black Stone of Iona! One may hear
that in Icolmkill or anywhere in the west. It
used to be the most binding oath in the
Highlands, and even now is held as an indisputable
warrant of truth. In Iona itself,
strangely enough, one would be much more
likely to hear a statement affirmed "by St.
Martin's Cross." On this stone—the old
Druidic Stone of Destiny, sacred among
the Gael before Christ was born—Columba
crowned Aidan King of Argyll. Later, the
stone was taken to Dunstaffnage, where the
Lords of the Isles were made princes: thence
to Scone, where the last of the Celtic Kings
of Scotland was crowned on it. It now lies
in Westminster Abbey, a part of the Coronation
Chair, and since Edward I. every British
monarch has been crowned upon it. If ever
the Stone of Destiny be moved again, that
writing on the wall will be the signature of a
falling dynasty; but perhaps, like Iona in the
island saying, this can be left to the Gaelic
equivalent of Nevermas, "gus am bi MacCailein
na' rìgh," "till Argyll be a king."</p>
<p><br />In my childhood I well recall meeting in
Iona an old man who had come from the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span>
glens of Antrim, to me memorable because he
was the last Gaelic minstrel of the old kind I
have seen. "It was a poor land, Antrim," he
said, "with no Gaelic, a bitter lot o' protestantry,
an' little music."</p>
<p>I remember, too, his adding in effect:</p>
<p>"It is in the west you should be if you
want music, an' men and women without
coldness or the hard mouth. In Donegal an'
Mayo an' all down Connemara-way to the
cliffs of Moher you'll hear the wind an' the
voices o' the Shee with never a man to curse
the one or the other." I asked him why he
had come to Iona. It was to see the isle of
Colum, he said, "St. Bridget's brother, God
bless the pair av' thim." He was on his way
to Oban, thence to go to a far place in the
Athole country, where his daughter had
married a factor who had returned to his
own land from the Irish west, and was the
more dear to the old man because his only
living blood-kin, and because she had called
her little girl by the name of the old harper's
long-lost love, "my love an' my
wife."</p>
<p>The last harper, though he had not his harp
with him. He had come from Drogheda in a
cattle-boat to Islay (whence he had sailed in
a fishing-smack to Iona), and his friend the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span>
mate had promised to leave the harp and his
other belongings at Oban in safe keeping. He
had with him, however, a small instrument
that he called his little clar. It was something
between a guitar and a cithern, suggestive of
a primitive violin, and he played on it sometimes
with his fingers, sometimes with a
short bit of wood like a child's tipcat; and,
he said, could make good music with a
hazel-wand or "the dry straight rod of a
quicken when that's to be had." He said
this quaint instrument had come down to
him through fifty-one generations: literally,
"eleven and twice twenty <i>sheanairean</i> (grandfathers,
or elders or forebears)," of whom
he could at any moment give the pedigree
of <i>ceithir deug air 'fhichead</i>, "four and
ten upon twenty"—that is, to translate
the Gaelic method of enumeration, "thirty-four."</p>
<p>This was at the house of a minister then
lodging in the island, and it was he who
hosted the old harper. He told me, later,
that he had no doubt this was the old-world
cruit, the Welsh <i>crwth</i> of to-day, and the
once colloquial Lowland "crowther," akin to
the Roman <i>canora cythara</i>, the "forebear" of
the modern Spanish guitar. To this day, I
may add, Highlanders (at least in the west)<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span>
call the guitar the <i>Cruit-Spànteach</i>. There
seems to have been four kinds of "harp"
in the old days: the clar or clarsach, the
kairneen (ceirnine), the kreemtheencrooth
(cream-thine-cruit), and the cionar cruit.
The clarsach was the harp proper; that is,
the small Celtic harp. The ceirnine was the
smaller hand-harp. The "creamthine cruit"
had six strings, and was probably used chiefly
at festivals, possibly for a strong sonance to
accentuate chants; while the cionar cruit had
ten strings, and was played either by a bow
or with a wooden or other instrument. It
must have been a cionar-cruit, ancient or a
rude later-day imitation, that the old harper
had.</p>
<p>Poor old man, I fear he never played on his
harp again; for I learned later that he had
found his Athole haven broken up, and his
daughter and her husband about to emigrate
to Canada, so that he went with them, and
died on the way—perhaps as much from the
mountain-longing and home-sickness as from
any more tangible ill.</p>
<p>I have a double memento of him that I
value. In Islay he had bought or been given
a little book of Gaelic songs (the Scoto-Gaelic
must have puzzled him sorely, poor old <i>eirionnach</i>),
and this he left behind him, and my<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span>
minister friend gave it to me, with much of
the above noted down on its end-pages. The
little book had been printed early in the
century, and was called <i>Ceilleirean Binn nan
Creagan Aosda</i>, literally "Melodious Little
Warblings from the Aged Rocks"; and it
has always been dear to me because of one
lovely phrase in it about birds, where the
unknown Gaelic singer calls them "clann
bheag' nam preas," the small clan of the
bushes, equivalent in English to "the children
of the bushes." This occurs in a lovely
verse—</p>
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">"Mu'n cuairt do bhruachaibh ard mo glinn,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Biodh luba gheuga 's orra blath,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">'s clann bheag' nam preas a' tabhairst seinn<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Do chreagaibh aosd oran graidh."</span>
</div></div>
<p>("Along the lofty sides of my glen let there
be bending boughs clad in blossom, and
the children of the bushes making the aged
rocks re-echo their songs of love")—truly a
characteristic Gaelic wish, characteristically
expressed.</p>
<p>And though this that I am about to say did
not happen on Iona, I may tell it here, for it
was there and from an islander I heard it,
an old man herding among the troubled
rocky pastures of Sguir Mòr and Cnoc na<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span>
Fhiona, in the south of that western part called
Sliav Starr—one translation of which might
be Wuthering Heights, for the word can be
rendered wind-blustery or wind-noisy; though
I fancy that <i>starr</i> is, on Iona, commonly
taken to mean a strong coarse grass. (Fhiona
here I take to be not the genitive of a name,
nor that of "wine," but a mis-spelling of
<i>fionna</i>, grain.)</p>
<p>When he was a boy he was in the island of
Barra, he said, and he had a foster-brother
called Iain Macneil. Iain was born with
music in his mind, for though he was ever a
poor creature as a man, having as a child
eaten of the bird's heart, he could hear a
power o' wonder in the wind.<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> He had never
come to any good in a worldly sense, my old
herdsman Micheil said; but it was not from
want of cleverness only, but because "he had
enough with his music." "Poor man, he
failed in everything he did but that—and,
sure, that was not against him, for <i>is ann air
an tràghadh a rugadh e</i>—wasn't he born when
the tide was ebbing?" Besides, there was a
mystery. Iain's father was said to be an<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span>
Iona man, but that was only a politeness and
a play upon words ("<i>The Holy Isle of the
Western Sea</i>" could mean either Iona or the
mystic Hy-Bràsil, or Tir-na-thonn of the
underworld); for he had no mortal father,
but a man of the Smiling Distant People was
his father. Iain's mother had loved her
Leannan-shee, her fairy sweetheart, but that
love is too strong for a woman to bear, and
she died. Before Iain was born she lay
under a bush of whitethorn, and her Leannan
appeared to her. "I can't give you life," he
said, "unless you'll come away with me."
But she would not; for she wished the child
to have Christian baptism. "Well, good-bye,"
he said, "but you are a weak love. A
woman should care more for her lover than
her child. But I'll do this: I'll give the child
the dew, an' he won't die, an' we'll take him
away when we want him. An' for a gift to
him, you can have either beauty or music."
"I don't want the dew," she said, "for I'd
rather he lay below the grass beside me when
his time comes: an' as for beauty, it's been
my sorrow. But because I love the songs you
have sung to me an' wooed me with, an'
made me forget to hide my soul from you—an'
it fallen as helpless as a broken wave on
damp sand—let the child have the <i>binn-beul</i><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span>
an' the <i>làmh clarsaireachd</i> (the melodious mouth
an' the harping hand)."</p>
<p>And truly enough Iain Macneil "went away."
He went back to his own people. It must
have been a grief to him not to lie under
the grass beside his mother, but it was not for
his helping. For days before he mysteriously
disappeared he went about making a <i>ciucharan</i>
like a November wind, a singular plaintive
moaning. When asked by his foster-brother
Micheil why he was not content, he answered
only "<i>Far am bi mo ghaol, bidh
mo thathaich</i>" (Where my Love is, there
must my returning be). He had for days,
said Micheil, the mournful crying in the ear
that is so often a presage of death or sorrow;
and himself had said once "Tha 'n éabh
a' m' chenais"—the cry is in my ear. When
he went away, that going was the way of the
snow.</p>
<p><br />It is no wonder that legends of Finn and
Oisein, of Oscur and Gaul and Diarmid, of
Cuchullin, and many of the old stories of the
Gaelic chivalry survive in the isles. There,
more than in Ireland, Gaelic has survived as
the living speech, and though now in the
Inner Hebrides it is dying before "an a'
Beurla," the English tongue, and still more<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span>
before the degraded "Bheurla leathan" or
Glasgow-English of the lowland west, the
old vernacular still holds an ancient
treasure.</p>
<p>The last time I sailed to Staffa from Ulva,
a dead calm set in, and we took a man from
Gometra to help with an oar—his recommendation
being that he was "cho làidir ri
Cuchullin," as strong as Coohoolin. But
neither in Iona nor in the northward isles
nor in Skye itself, have I found or heard
of much concerning the great Gaelic hero.
Fionn and <ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both 'Oìsin' and 'Oisìn' were used in this text. This was retained.">Oisìn</ins> and Diarmid are the names
oftenest heard, both in legend and proverbial
allusion. An habitual mistake is made by
writers who speak of the famous Cuchullin
or Cuthullin mountains in Skye as having
been named after Cuchullin; and though
sometimes the local guides to summer tourists
may speak of the Gaelic hero in connection
with the mountains north of Coruisk, that is
only because of hearsay. The Gaelic name
should never be rendered as the Cuthullin or
Cohoolin mountains, but as the <ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both 'Coolins' and 'Coolin' mountain were used in this text. This was retained.">Coolins</ins>. The
most obvious meaning of the name <i>Cuilfhion</i>
(Kyoolyun or Coolun), is "the fine corner,"
but, as has been suggested, the hills may have
got their name because of the "cuillionn
mara" or sea-holly, which is pronounced<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span>
<i>Ku' l'-unn</i> or <i>coolin</i>. This is most probably
the origin of the name.</p>
<p>In fine weather one may see from Iona the
<ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both 'Coolins' and 'Coolin' mountain were used in this text. This was retained.">Coolins</ins> standing out in lovely blue against
the northern sky-line, their contours the most
beautiful feature in a view of surpassing
beauty. How often I have watched them,
have often dreamed of what they have seen,
since <ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both 'Oìsin' and 'Oisìn' were used in this text. This was retained.">Oisìn</ins> passed that way with Malvina:
since Cuchullin learned the feats of war at
Dûn Scaaiah, from that great queen whose
name, it is said, the island bears in remembrance
of her; since Connlaoch, his son, set
sail to meet so tragic a death in Ireland.
There are two women of Gaelic antiquity
who above all others have always held my
imagination as with a spell: Scathach or
Sgathàith (<i>sky-ah</i>), the sombre Amazonian
queen of the mountain-island (then perhaps,
as now, known also as the Isle of
Mist), and Meave, the great queen of Connaught,
whose name has its mountain bases
in gigantic wars, and its summits among
the wild poetry and romance of the
Shee.</p>
<p>My earliest knowledge of the heroic cycle
of Celtic mythology and history came to me,
as a child, when I spent my first summer in
Iona. How well I remember a fantastic<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span>
legend I was told: how that these far blue
mountains, so freaked into a savage beauty,
were due to the sword-play of Cuchullin.
And this happened because the Queen o' Skye
had put a spear through the two breasts of his
love, so that he went in among her warrior
women and slew every one, and severed the
head of Sgàyah herself, and threw it into
Coruisk, where to this day it floats as Eilean
Dubh, the dark isle. Thereafter, Cuchullin
hewed the mountain-tops into great clefts, and
trampled the hills into a craggy wilderness,
and then rushed into the waves and fought
with the sea-hordes till far away the bewildered
and terrified stallions of the ocean
dashed upon the rocks of Man and uttermost
shores of Erin.</p>
<p>This magnificent mountain range can be
seen better still from Lunga near Iona, whence
it is a short sail with a southerly wind. In
Lunga there is a hill called Cnoc Cruit or
Dun Cruit, and thence one may see, as in a
vast illuminated missal whose pages are of
deep blue with bindings of azure and pale
gold, innumerable green isles and peaks and
hills of the hue of the wild plum. When
last I was there it was a day of cloudless June.
There was not a sound but the hum of
the wild bee foraging in the long garths of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span>
white clover, and the continual sighing of a
wave. Listening, I thought I heard a harper
playing in the hollow of the hill. It may have
been the bees heavy with the wine of honey,
but I was content with my fancy and fell
asleep, and dreamed that a harper came out
of the hill, at first so small that he seemed like
the green stalk of a lily and had hands like
daisies, and then go great that I saw his
breath darkening the waves far out on the
Hebrid sea. He played, till I saw the stars
fall in a ceaseless, dazzling rain upon Iona. A
wind blew that rain away, and out of the
wave that had been Iona I saw thousands
upon thousands of white doves rise from the
foam and fly down the four great highways
of the wind. When I woke, there was no
one near. Iona lay like an emerald under
the wild-plum bloom of the Mull mountains.
The bees stumbled through the clover; a
heron stood silver-grey upon the grey-blue
stone; the continual wave was, as before,
as one wave, and with the same hushed
sighing.</p>
<p><br />Two or three years ago I heard a boatman
using a singular phrase, to the effect that a
certain deed was as kindly a thought as that
of the piper who played to St. Micheil in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span>
his grave. I had never heard of this before,
or anything like it, nor have I since, on lip
or in book. He told me that he spoke of a
wandering piper known as Piobaire Raonull
Dall, Blind Piper Ronald, who fifty years or so
ago used to wander through the isles and
West Highlands; and how he never failed to
play a spring on his pipes, either to please or
to console, or maybe to air a lament for what's
lost now and can't come again, when on any
holy day he stood before a figure of the Virgin
(as he might well do in Barra or South Uist),
or by old tombs or habitations of saints.
My friend's father or one of his people, once,
in the Kyles of Bute, when sailing past the
little ruinous graveyard of Kilmichael on
the Bute shore, had come upon Raonull-Dall,
pacing slowly before the broken stones
and the little cell which legend says is both
the hermitage and the grave of St. Micheil.
When asked what he was playing and what
for, in that lonely spot, he said it was an
old ancient pibroch, the Gathering of the
Clerics, which he was playing just to cheer
the heart of the good man down below.
When told that St. Micheil would be having
his fill of good music where he was, the
old man came away in the boat, and for
long sat silent and strangely disheartened. I<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span>
have more than once since then sailed to that
little lonely ancient grave of Kilmichael in
the Kyles of Bute, from Tignabruaich or
further Cantyre, and have wished that I too
could play a spring upon the pipes, for if so
I would play to the kind heart of "Piobaire
Raonull Dall."</p>
<p>Of all the saints of the west, from St.
Molios or Molossius (Maol-Iosa? the servant
by Jesus?) who has left his name in the chief
township in Arran, to St. Barr, who has
given his to the largest of the Bishop's Isles,
as the great Barra island-chain in the South
Hebrides used to be called, there is none
so commonly remembered and so frequently
invoked as St. Micheil. There used to be no
festival in the Western Isles so popular as
that held on 29th September, "La' Fheill
Mhicheil," the Day of the Festival of Michael;
and the Eve of Michael's Day is still
in a few places one of the gayest nights in
the year, though no longer is every barn turned
into a dancing place or a place of merry-making
or, at least, a place for lovers to
meet and give betrothal gifts. The day
itself, in the Catholic Isles, was begun with
a special Mass, and from hour to hour
was filled with traditional duties and pleasures.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span></p>
<p>The whole of the St. Micheil ceremonies
were of a remote origin, and some, as the
ancient and almost inexplicable dances, and
their archaic accompaniment of word and
gesture far older than the sacrificial slaying
of the Michaelmas Lamb. It is, however,
not improbable that this latter rite was a
survival of a pagan custom long anterior to
the substitution of the Christian for the Druidic
faith.</p>
<p>The "Iollach Mhicheil"—the triumphal
song of Michael—is quite as much pagan as
Christian. We have here, indeed, one of the
most interesting and convincing instances of
the transmutation of a personal symbol. St.
Michael is on the surface a saint of extraordinary
powers and the patron of the shores
and the shore-folk: deeper, he is an angel,
who is upon the sea what the angelical saint,
St. George, is upon the land: deeper, he is
a blending of the Roman Neptune and the
Greek Poseidon: deeper, he is himself an
ancient Celtic god: deeper, he is no other
than Manannan, the god of ocean and all
waters, in the Gaelic Pantheon: as, once more,
Manannan himself is dimly revealed to us as
still more ancient, more primitive, and even as
supreme in remote godhead, the Father of an
immortal Clan.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span></p>
<p>To this day Micheil is sometimes alluded to
as the god Micheil, and I have seen some very
strange Gaelic lines which run in effect:—</p>
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">"It was well thou hadst the horse of the god Micheil<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Who goes without a bit in his mouth,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">So that thou couldst ride him through the fields of the air,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">And with him leap over the knowledge of Nature"—</span>
</div></div>
<p>presumably not very ancient as they stand,
because of the use of "steud" for horse, and
"naduir" for nature, obvious adaptations from
English and Latin. Certainly St. Michael
has left his name in many places, from the
shores of the Hebrides to the famous Mont
St. Michel of Brittany, and I doubt not that
everywhere an earlier folk, at the same places,
called him Manannan. In a most unlikely
place to find a record of old hymns and
folk-songs, one of the volumes of Reports of
the Highlands and Islands Commission, Mr.
Carmichael many years ago contributed some
of his unequalled store of Hebridean reminiscence
and knowledge. Among these old
things saved, there is none that is better
worth saving than the beautiful Catholic
hymn or invocation sung at the time of the
midsummer migration to the hill-pastures.
In this <ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both 'sheiling-hymn' and 'shealing-hymn' were used in this text. This was retained.">shealing-hymn</ins> the three powers who<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span>
are invoked are St. Micheil (for he is a
patron saint of horses and travel, as well as of
the sea and seafarers), St. Columba, guardian
of Cattle, and the Virgin Mary, "Mathair
<ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both 'Uain-ghil' and 'Uain ghil' were used in this text. This was retained.">Uain ghil</ins>," "Mother of the White Lamb,"
as the tender Gaelic has it, who is so
beautifully called the golden-haired Virgin
Shepherdess.</p>
<p>It is pleasant to think of Columba, who
loved animals, and whose care for his shepherd-people
was always so great, as having
become the patron saint of cattle. It is thus
that the gods are shaped out of a little mortal
clay, the great desire of the heart, and immortal
dreams.</p>
<p>I may give the whole hymn in English, as
rendered by Mr. Carmichael:</p>
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i6">I</span>
</div><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">"Thou gentle Michael of the white steed,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Who subdued the Dragon of blood,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">For love of God and the Son of Mary,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Spread over us thy wing, shield us all!<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Spread over us thy wing, shield us all!</span>
</div><div class="stanza">
<span class="i6">II</span>
</div><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">"Mary beloved! Mother of the White Lamb,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Protect us, thou Virgin of nobleness,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Queen of beauty! Shepherdess of the flocks!<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Keep our cattle, surround us together,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Keep our cattle, surround us together.</span>
</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span><div class="stanza">
<span class="i6">III</span>
</div><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">"Thou Columba, the friendly, the kind,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">In name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Through the Three-in-One, through the Three,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Encompass us, guard our procession,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Encompass us, guard our procession.</span>
</div><div class="stanza">
<span class="i6">IV</span>
</div><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">"Thou Father! Thou Son! Thou Holy Spirit!<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Be the Three-One with us day and night,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">On the machair plain, on the mountain ridge,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">The Three-one is with us, with His arm around our head,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">The Three-One is with us, with his arm around our head."</span>
</div></div>
<p>I have heard a paraphrase of this hymn,
both in Gaelic and English, on Iona; and
once, off Soa, a little island to the south of
Icolmkill, took down a verse which I thought
was local, but which I afterwards found (with
very slight variance) in Mr. Carmichael's
Governmental Uist-Record. It was sung by
Barra fishermen, and ran in effect "O Father,
Son, and Holy Ghost! O Holy Trinity, be
with us day and night. On the crested wave
as on the mountain-side! Our Mother, Holy
Mary Mother, has her arm under our head;
our pillow is the arm of Mary, Mary the Holy
Mother."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span></p>
<p>It is perhaps the saddest commentary that
could be made on what we have lost that the
children of those who were wont to go to
rest, or upon any adventure, or to stand in
the shadow of death, with some such words as</p>
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">"My soul is with the Light on the mountains,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Archangel Micheil shield my soul!"</span>
</div></div>
<p>now go or stand in a scornful or heedless
silence, or without remembrance, as others did
who forgot to trim their lamps.</p>
<p>Who now would go up to the hill-pastures
singing the Beannachadh Buachailleag, the
Herding Blessing? With the passing of the
old language the old solemnity goes, and the
old beauty, and the old patient, loving wonder.
I do not like to think of what songs are likely
to replace the Herding Blessing, whose first
verse runs thus:</p>
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">"I place this flock before me<br /></span>
<span class="i0">As ordained by the King of the World,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Mary Virgin to keep them, to wait them, to watch them.<br /></span>
<span class="i2">On hill and glen and plain,<br /></span>
<span class="i2">On hill, in glen, on plain."</span>
</div></div>
<p>In the maelstrom of the cities the old race
perishes, drowns. How common the foolish
utterance of narrow lives, that all these old
ways of thought are superstitious. To have<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span>
a superstition is, for these, a worse ill than
to have a shrunken soul. I do not believe in
spells and charms and foolish incantations,
but I think that ancient wisdom out of the
simple and primitive heart of an older time is
not an ill heritage; and if to believe in the
power of the spirit is to be superstitious, I am
well content to be of the company that is now
forsaken.</p>
<p>But even in what may more fairly be called
superstitious, have we surety that we have
done well in our exchange?</p>
<p>A short while ago I was on the hillside
above one of the much-frequented lochs in
eastern Argyll. Something brought to my
mind, as I went farther up into the clean
solitudes, one of the verses of the Herding
Blessing:</p>
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">"From rocks, from snow-wreaths, from streams,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">From crooked ways, from destructive pits,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">From the arrows of the slim fairy women,<br /></span>
<span class="i2">From the heart of envy, the eye of evil,<br /></span>
<span class="i4">Keep us, Holy St. Bride."</span>
</div></div>
<p>"From the arrows of the slim fairy women."
And I—do I believe in that? At least it will
be admitted that it is worth a belief; it is a
pleasant dream; it is a gate into a lovely
world; it is a secret garden, where are old<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span>
sweet echoes; it has the rainbow-light of
poetry. Is it not poetry? And I—oh yes,
I believe it, that superstition: a thousand-fold
more real is it, more believable, than that
coarse-tongued, ill-mannered, boorish people,
desperate in slovenly pleasure. For that will
stay, and they will go. And if I am wrong,
then I will rather go with it than stay with
them. And yet—surely, surely the day will
come when this sordidness of life as it is so
often revealed to us will sink into deep waters,
and the stream become purified, and again by
its banks be seen the slim fairy women of
health and beauty and all noble and dignified
things.</p>
<p>This is a far cry from Iona! And I had
meant to write only of how I heard so recently
as three or four summers ago a verse of the
Uist Herding Chant. It was recited to me,
over against Dûn-I, by a friend who is a
crofter in that part of Iona. It was not quite
as Mr. Carmichael translates it, but near
enough. The Rann Buachhailleag is, I should
add, addressed to the cattle.</p>
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">"The protection of God and Columba<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Encompass your going and coming,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">And about you be the milkmaid of the smooth white palms,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Briget of the clustering hair, golden brown."</span>
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span></div></div>
<p>On Iona, however, there is, so far as I remember,
no special spot sacred to St. Micheil:
but there is a legend that on the night Columba
died Micheil came over the waves on a
rippling flood of light, which was a cloud of
angelic wings, and that he sang a hymn to
the soul of the saint before it took flight for
its heavenly fatherland. No one heard that
hymn save Colum, but I think that he who
first spoke of it remembered a more ancient
legend of how Manannan came to Cuchullin
when he was in the country of the Shee, when
Liban laughed.</p>
<p><br />I spoke of Port-na-Churaich, the Haven of
the Coracle, a little ago. How strange a
history is that of Iona since the coming of the
Irish priest, Crimthan, or Crimmon as we call
the name, surnamed Colum Cille, the Dove
of the Church. Perhaps its unwritten history
is not less strange. God was revered on
Iona by priests of a forgotten faith before
the Cross was raised. The sun-priest and the
moon-worshipper had their revelation here.
I do not think their offerings were despised.
Colum, who loved the Trinity so well that on
one occasion he subsisted for three days on
the mystery of the mere word, did not forego
the luxury of human sacrifice, though he abhorred<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span>
the blood-stained altar. For, to him,
an obstinate pagan slain was to the glory of
God. The moon-worshipper did no worse
when he led the chosen victim to the dolmen.
But the moon-worshipper was a Pict without
the marvel of the written word; so he remained
a heathen, and the Christian named
himself saint or martyr.</p>
<p>None knows with surety who dwelled on
this mysterious island before the famous son
of Feilim of Clan Domnhuil, great-grandson
of Niall of the Nine Hostages, came with his
fellow-monks and raised the Cross among the
wondering Picts. But the furthest record
tells of worship. Legend itself is more ancient
here than elsewhere. Once a woman was
worshipped. Some say she was the moon,
but this was before the dim day of the moon-worshippers.
(In Gaelic too, as with all the
Celtic peoples, it is not the moon but the sun
that is feminine.) She may have been an
ancestral Brighde, or that mysterious Anait
whose Scythian name survives elsewhere in
the Gaelic west, and nothing else of all her
ancient glory but that shadowy word. Perhaps,
here, the Celts remembered one whom they
had heard of in Asian valleys or by the waters
of Nilus, and called upon Isis under a new
name.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span></p>
<p>The Haven of the Coracle! It was not
Colum and his white-robe company who first
made the isle sacred. I have heard that when
Mary Macleod (our best-loved Hebridean
poet) was asked what she thought of Iona,
she replied that she thought it was the one bit
of Eden that had not been destroyed, and that
it was none other than the central isle in the
Garden untouched of Eve or Adam, where
the angels waited.</p>
<p>Many others have dreamed by that lonely
cairn of the Irish king, before Colum, and,
doubtless, many since the child who sought
the Divine forges.</p>
<p><br />Years afterwards I wrote, in the same place,
after an absence wherein Iona had become as
a dream to me, the story of St. Briget, in
the Hebrides called Bride, under the love-name
commonly given her, Muime Chriosd—Christ's
Foster-Mother. May I quote again,
here, as so apposite to what I have written,
to what indirectly I am trying to convey of
the spiritual history of Iona, some portion of
it?</p>
<p>In my legendary story I tell of how one
called Dùghall, of a kingly line, sailing from
Ireland, came to be cast upon the ocean-shore
of Iona, then called Innis-nan-Dhruidhneach,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span>
the Isle of the Druids—for this was before
the cry of the Sacred Wolf was heard, as an
old-time island-poet has it, playing upon
Colum's house-name, Crimthan, signifying a
wolf. The frail coracle in which he and
others had crossed the Moyle had been driven
before a tempest, and cast at sunrise like a
spent fish upon the rocks of the little haven
that is now called Port-na-Churaich. All had
found death in the wave except himself and
the little girl-child he had brought with him
from Ireland, the child of so much tragic
mystery.</p>
<p>When, warmed by the sun, they rose, they
found themselves in a waste place. Dùghall
was ill in his mind because of the portents,
and now to his fear and amaze the child
Briget knelt on the stones, and, with claspt
hands, frail and pink as the sea-shells round
about her, sang a song of words which were
unknown to him. This was the more marvellous,
as she was yet but an infant, and could say
few words even of Erse, the only tongue she
had heard.</p>
<p>At this portent, he knew that Aodh the
Arch-Druid had spoken seeingly. Truly this
child was not of human parentage. So he,
too, kneeled; and, bowing before her, asked
if she were of the race of the Tuatha de<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span>
Danann, or of the older gods, and what her
will was, that he might be her servant. Then
it was that the kneeling child looked at him,
and sang in a low sweet voice in Erse:</p>
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">"I am but a little child,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Dùghall, son of Hugh, son of Art,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">But my garment shall be laid<br /></span>
<span class="i0">On the lord of the world,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Yea, surely it shall be that He,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">The King of Elements Himself,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Shall lean against my bosom,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">And I will give him peace,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">And peace will I give to all who ask<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Because of this mighty Prince,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">And because of his Mother that is the Daughter of Peace."</span>
</div></div>
<p>And while Dùghall Donn was still marvelling
at this thing, the Arch-Druid of Iona approached,
with his white-robed priests. A
grave welcome was given to the stranger.
While the youngest of the servants of God
was entrusted with the child, the Arch-Druid
took Dùghall aside and questioned him. It
was not till the third day that the old man
gave his decision. Dùghall Don was to
abide on Iona if he so willed; but the child
was to stay. His life would be spared, nor
would he be a bondager of any kind, and a
little land to till would be given him, and all<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span>
that he might need. But of his past he was
to say no word. His name was to become as
nought, and he was to be known simply as
Dùvach. The child, too, was to be named
Bride, for that was the way the name Briget
is called in the Erse of the Isles.</p>
<p>To the question of Dùghall, that was
thenceforth Dùvach, as to why he laid so
great stress on the child, who was a girl, and
the reputed offspring of shame at that, Cathal
the Arch-Druid replied thus: "My kinsman
Aodh of the golden hair, who sent you here,
was wiser than Hugh the king, and all the
Druids of Aoimag. Truly, this child is an
Immortal. There is an ancient prophecy concerning
her: surely of her who is now here,
and no other. There shall be, it says, a spotless
maid born of a virgin of the ancient divine
race in Innisfail. And when for the seventh
time the sacred year has come, she will hold
Eternity in her lap as a white flower. Her
maiden breasts shall swell with milk for the
Prince of the World. She shall give suck to
the King of the Elements. So I say unto you,
Dùvach, go in peace. Take unto yourself a
wife, and live upon the place I will allot on the
east side of Ioua. Treat Bride as though she
were your soul, and leave her much alone, and
let her learn of the sun and the wind. In<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span>
the fulness of time the prophecy shall be
fulfilled."</p>
<p>So was it, from that day of the days.
Dùvach took a wife unto himself, who weaned
the little Bride, who grew in beauty and grace,
so that all men marvelled. Year by year for
seven years the wife of Dùvach bore him a son,
and these grew apace in strength, so that by
the beginning of the third year of the seventh
circle of Bride's life there were three stalwart
youths to brother her, and three comely and
strong lads, and one young boy fair to see.
Nor did any one, not even Bride herself,
saving Cathal the Arch-Druid, know that
Dùvach the herdsman was Dùghall Donn, of a
princely race in Innisfail.</p>
<p>In the end, too, Dùvach came to think that
he had dreamed, or at the least that Cathal
had not interpreted the prophecy aright. For
though Bride was of exceeding beauty, and
of a holiness that made the young druids bow
before her as though she were a bàndia, yet
the world went on as before, and the days
brought no change. Often, while she was
still a child, he had questioned her about the
words she had said as a babe, but she had
no memory of them. Once, in her ninth year,
he came upon her on the hillside of Dûn-I
singing these self-same words. Her eyes<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span>
dreamed far away. He bowed his head, and,
praying to the Giver of Light, hurried to Cathal.
The old man bade him speak no more to the
child concerning the mysteries.</p>
<p>Bride lived the hours of her days upon
the slopes of Dûn-I, herding the sheep, or in
following the kye upon the green hillocks and
grassy dunes of what then, as now, was called
the Machar. The beauty of the world was her
daily food. The spirit within her was like
sunlight behind a white flower. The birdeens
in the green bushes sang for joy when they
saw her blue eyes. The tender prayers that
were in her heart were often seen flying
above her head in the form of white doves of
sunshine.</p>
<p>But when the middle of the year came that
was (though Dùvach had forgotten it) the
year of the prophecy, his eldest son, Conn,
who was now a man, murmured against the
virginity of Bride, because of her beauty and
because a chieftain of the mainland was eager
to wed her. "I shall wed Bride or raid Ioua,"
was the message he had sent.</p>
<p>So one day, before the Great Fire of the
Summer Festival, Conn and his brothers reproached
Bride.</p>
<p>"Idle are these pure eyes, O Bride, not to be
as lamps at thy marriage-bed."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span></p>
<p>"Truly, it is not by the eyes that we live,"
replied the maiden gently, while to their fear
and amazement she passed her hand before
her face and let them see that the sockets were
empty.</p>
<p>Trembling with awe at this portent, Dùvach
intervened:</p>
<p>"By the sun I swear it, O Bride, that thou
shalt marry whomsoever thou wilt and none
other, and when thou wilt, or not at all, if such
be thy will."</p>
<p>And when he had spoken, Bride smiled,
and passed her hand before her face again,
and all there were abashed because of the
blue light as of morning that was in her
shining eyes.</p>
<p>It was while the dew was yet wet on the
grass that on the morrow Bride came out of
her father's house, and went up the steep slope
of Dûn-I. The crying of the ewes and
lambs at the pastures came plaintively against
the dawn. The lowing of the kye arose from
the sandy hollows by the shore, or from the
meadows on the lower slopes. Through the
whole island went a rapid, trickling sound,
most sweet to hear: the myriad voices of
twittering birds, from the dotterel in the <ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both 'sea-weed' and 'seaweed' were used in this text. This was retained.">seaweed</ins>,
to the larks climbing the blue slopes of
heaven.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span></p>
<p>This was the festival of her birth, and she
was clad in white. About her waist was a
girdle of the sacred rowan, the feathery green
leaves flickering dusky shadows upon her robe
as she moved. The light upon her yellow hair
was as when morning wakes, laughing in wind
amid the tall corn. As she went she sang to
herself, softly as the crooning of a dove. If
any had been there to hear he would have
been abashed, for the words were not in Erse,
and the eyes of the beautiful girl were as those
of one in a vision.</p>
<p>When, at last, a brief while before sunrise,
she reached the summit of the Scuir, that is so
small a hill and yet seems so big in Iona,
where it is the sole peak, she found three
young druids there, ready to tend the sacred
fire the moment the sunrays should kindle it.
Each was clad in a white robe, with fillets of oak
leaves; and each had a golden armlet. They
made a quiet obeisance as she approached.
One stepped forward, with a flush in his face
because of her beauty, that was as a sea-wave
for grace and a flower for purity, as sunlight
for joy and moonlight for peace.</p>
<p>"Thou mayst draw near if thou wilt,
Bride, daughter of Dùvach," he said, with
something of reverence as well as of grave
courtesy in his voice; "for the holy Cathal<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span>
hath said that the breath of the Source of All
is upon thee. It is not lawful for women to be
here at this moment, but thou hast the law
shining upon thy face and in thine eyes. Hast
thou come to pray?"</p>
<p>But at that moment a cry came from one of
his companions. He turned, and rejoined his
fellows. Then all three sank upon their knees,
and with outstretched arms hailed the rising of
God.</p>
<p>As the sun rose, a solemn chant swelled
from their lips, ascending as incense through
the silent air. The glory of the new day
came soundlessly. Peace was in the blue
heaven, on the blue-green sea, and on the
green land. There was no wind, even where
the currents of the deep moved in shadowy
purple. The sea itself was silent, making no
more than a sighing slumber-breath round the
white sands of the isle, or a dull whisper
where the tide lifted the long weed that clung
to the rocks.</p>
<p>In what strange, mysterious way, Bride did
not see; but as the three druids held their
hands before the sacred fire there was a faint
crackling, then three thin spirals of blue smoke
rose, and soon dusky red and wan yellow
tongues of flame moved to and fro. The
sacrifice of God was made. Out of the immeasurable<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span>
heaven He had come, in His
golden chariot. Now, in the wonder and
mystery of His love, He was <ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both 're-born' and 'reborn' were used in this text. This was retained.">re-born</ins> upon the
world, re-born a little fugitive flame upon a
low hill in a remote isle. Great must be His
love that He could die thus daily in a thousand
places: so great His love that he could
give up His own body to daily death, and
suffer the holy flame that was in the embers
He illumined to be lighted and revered and
then scattered to the four quarters of the
world.</p>
<p>Bride could bear no longer the mystery of
this great love. It moved her to an ecstasy.
What tenderness of divine love that could
thus redeem the world daily: what long-suffering
for all the evil and cruelty done
hourly upon the weeping earth: what patience
with the bitterness of the blind fates! The
beauty of the worship of Be'al was upon her as
a golden glory. Her heart leaped to a song
that could not be sung.</p>
<p>Bowing her head, so that the tears fell upon
her hands, she rose and moved away.</p>
<p><br />Elsewhere I have told how a good man of
Iona sailed along the coast one Sabbath afternoon
with the Holy Book, and put the Word
upon the seals of Soa: and, in another tale,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span>
how a lonely man fought with a sea-woman
that was a seal; as, again, how two fishermen
strove with the sea-witch of Earraid: and, in
"The Dan-nan-Ron," of a man who went
mad with the sea-madness, because of the
seal-blood that was in his veins, he being a
MacOdrum of Uist, and one of the <ins title="Transcriber's Note: 'Sliochd-nan-Ron,' 'Sliochd nan Ron,' and 'Sliochd-nan-ròn' were used in this text. This was retained.">Sliochd nan Ron</ins>,
the Tribe of the Seal. And those
who have read the tale, twice printed, once as
"The Annir Choille," and again as "Cathal
of the Woods," will remember how, at the
end, the good hermit Molios, when near
death in his sea-cave of Arran, called the
seals to come out of the wave and listen to
him, so that he might tell them the white
story of Christ; and how in the moonshine,
with the flowing tide stealing from his feet to
his knees, the old saint preached the gospel of
love, while the seals crouched upon the rocks,
with their brown eyes filled with glad tears:
and how, before his death at dawn, he was
comforted by hearing them splashing to and
fro in the moon-dazzle, and calling one to the
other, "We, too, are of the sons of God."</p>
<p>What has so often been written about is a
reflection of what is in the mind: and though
stories of the seals may be heard from the
Rhinns of Islay to the Seven Hunters (and I
first heard that of the MacOdrums, the seal-folk,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span>
from a Uist man), I think that it was
because of what I heard of the sea-people on
Iona, when I was a child, that they have been
so much with me in remembrance.</p>
<p>In the short tale of the Moon-child, I told
how two seals that had been wronged by a
curse which had been put upon them by
Columba, forgave the saint, and gave him a
sore-won peace. I recall another (unpublished)
tale, where a seal called Domnhuil Dhu—a
name of evil omen—was heard laughing one
Hallowe'en on the rocks below the ruined
abbey, and calling to the creatures of the sea
that God was dead: and how the man who
heard him laughed, and was therewith
stricken with paralysis, and so fell sidelong
from the rocks into the deep wave, and was
afterwards found beaten as with hammers
and shredded as with sharp fangs.</p>
<p>But, as most characteristic, I would rather
tell here the story of Black Angus, though
the longer tale of which it forms a part has
been printed before.</p>
<p>One night, a dark rainy night it was, with
an uplift wind battering as with the palms of
savage hands the heavy clouds that hid the
moon, I went to the cottage near Spanish
Port, where my friend Ivor Maclean lived
with his old deaf mother. He had reluctantly<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span>
promised to tell me the legend of Black
Angus, a request he had ignored in a sullen
silence when he and Padruic Macrae and I
were on the Sound that day. No tales of the
kind should be told upon the water.</p>
<p>When I entered, he was sitting before the
flaming coal-fire; for on Iona now, by decree
of MacCailein Mòr, there is no more peat
burned.</p>
<p>"You will tell me now, Ivor?" was all I
said.</p>
<p>"Yes; I will be telling you now. And the
reason why I never told you before was
because it is not a wise or a good thing to tell
ancient stories about the sea while still on the
running wave. Macrae should not have done
that thing. It may be we shall suffer for it
when next we go out with the nets. We were
to go to-night; but, no, not I, no, no, for sure,
not for all the herring in the Sound."</p>
<p>"Is it an ancient <i>sgeul</i>, Ivor?"</p>
<p>"Ay. I am not for knowing the age of
these things. It may be as old as the days of
the <ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both 'Fèinn' and 'Féinn' were used in this text. This was retained.">Féinn</ins>, for all I know. It has come
down to us. Alasdair MacAlasdair of Tiree,
him that used to boast of having all the
stories of Colum and Brigdhe, it was he
told it to the mother of my mother, and she
to me."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span></p>
<p>"What is it called?"</p>
<p>"Well, this and that; but there is no
harm in saying it is called the Dark Nameless
One."</p>
<p>"The Dark Nameless One!"</p>
<p>"It is this way. But will you ever have
heard of the MacOdrums of Uist?"</p>
<p>"Ay; the <ins title="Transcriber's Note: 'Sliochd-nan-Ron,' 'Sliochd nan Ron,' and 'Sliochd-nan-ròn' were used in this text. This was retained.">Sliochd-nan-ròn</ins>."</p>
<p>"That is so. God knows. The <ins title="Transcriber's Note: 'Sliochd-nan-Ron,' 'Sliochd nan Ron,' and 'Sliochd-nan-ròn' were used in this text. This was retained.">Sliochd-nan-ron</ins>
... the progeny of the Seal.... Well,
well, no man knows what moves in the
shadow of life. And now I will be telling you
that old ancient tale, as it was given to me by
the mother of my mother."</p>
<p><br />On a day of the days, Colum was walking
alone by the sea-shore. The monks were at
the hoe or the spade, and some milking the
kye, and some at the fishing. They say it
was on the first day of the <i>Faoilleach Geamhraidh</i>,
the day that is called <i>Am Fhéill
Brighde</i>, and that they call Candlemas over
yonder.</p>
<p>The holy man had wandered on to where
the rocks are, opposite to Soa. He was praying
and praying; and it is said that whenever
he prayed aloud, the barren egg in the nest
would quicken, and the blighted bud unfold,
and the butterfly break its shroud.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span></p>
<p>Of a sudden he came upon a great black
seal, lying silent on the rocks, with wicked
eyes.</p>
<p>"My blessing upon you, O Ròn," he said,
with the good kind courteousness that was
his. "<i>Droch spadadh ort</i>," answered the
seal, "A bad end to you, Colum of the
Gown."</p>
<p>"Sure now," said Colum angrily, "I am
knowing by that curse that you are no friend
of Christ, but of the evil pagan faith out of
the north. For here I am known ever as
Colum the White, or as Colum the Saint; and
it is only the Picts and the wanton Normen
who deride me because of the holy white robe
I wear."</p>
<p>"Well, well," replied the seal, speaking
the good Gaelic as though it were the tongue
of the deep sea, as God knows it may be for
all you, I, or the blind wind can say; "well,
well, let that thing be: it's a wave-way here
or a wave-way there. But now, if it is a
druid you are, whether of fire or of Christ, be
telling me where my woman is, and where my
little daughter."</p>
<p>At this, Colum looked at him for a long
while. Then he knew.</p>
<p>"It is a man you were once, O Ròn?"</p>
<p>"Maybe ay and maybe no."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span></p>
<p>"And with that thick Gaelic that you
have, it will be out of the north isles you
come?"</p>
<p>"That is a true thing."</p>
<p>"Now I am for knowing at last who and
what you are. You are one of the race of
Odrum the Pagan?"</p>
<p>"Well, I am not denying it, Colum. And
what is more, I am Angus MacOdrum, Aonghas
mac Torcall mhic Odrum, and the name I am
known by is Black Angus."</p>
<p>"A fitting name too," said Colum the
Holy, "because of the black sin in your heart,
and the black end God has in store for
you."</p>
<p>At that Black Angus laughed.</p>
<p>"Why is the laughter upon you, Man-Seal?"</p>
<p>"Well, it is because of the good company
I'll be having. But, now, give me the word:
Are you for having seen or heard of a woman
called Kirsteen M'Vurich?"</p>
<p>"Kirsteen—Kirsteen—that is the good name
of a nun it is, and no sea-wanton!"</p>
<p>"O, a name here or a name there is soft
sand. And so you cannot be for telling me
where my woman is?"</p>
<p>"No."</p>
<p>"Then a stake for your belly, and nails<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span>
through your hands, thirst on your tongue, and
the corbies at your eyne!"</p>
<p>And, with that, Black Angus louped into
the green water, and the hoarse wild laugh of
him sprang into the air and fell dead upon the
shore like a wind-spent mew.</p>
<p>Colum went slowly back to the brethren,
brooding deep. "God is good," he said in a
low voice, again and again; and each time that
he spoke there came a daisy into the grass, or
a bird rose, with song to it for the first time,
wonderful and sweet to hear.</p>
<p>As he drew near to the House of God he
met Murtagh, an old monk of the ancient race
of the isles.</p>
<p>"Who is Kirsteen M'Vurich, Murtagh?" he
asked.</p>
<p>"She was a good servant of Christ, she was,
in the south isles, O Colum, till Black Angus
won her to the sea."</p>
<p>"And when was that?"</p>
<p>"Nigh upon a thousand years ago."</p>
<p>"But can mortal sin live as long as that?"</p>
<p>"Ay, it endureth. Long, long ago, before
<ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both 'Oìsin' and 'Oisìn' were used in this text. This was retained.">Oisìn</ins> sang, before Fionn, before Cuchullin,
was a glorious great prince, and in the days
when the Tuatha-de-Danann were sole lords
in all green Banba, Black Angus made the
woman Kirsteen M'Vurich leave the place of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span>
prayer and go down to the sea-shore, and there
he leaped upon her and made her his prey, and
she followed him into the sea."</p>
<p>"And is death above her now?"</p>
<p>"No. She is the woman that weaves the
sea-spells at the wild place out yonder that is
known as Earraid: she that is called the sea-witch."</p>
<p>"Then why was Black Angus for the seeking
her here and the seeking her there?"</p>
<p>"It is the Doom. It is Adam's first wife she
is, that sea-witch over there, where the foam is
ever in the sharp fangs of the rocks."</p>
<p>"And who will he be?"</p>
<p>"His body is the body of Angus, the son of
Torcall of the race of Odrum, for all that a
seal he is to the seeming; but the soul of him
is Judas."</p>
<p>"Black Judas, Murtagh?"</p>
<p>"Ay, Black Judas, Colum."</p>
<p><br />But with that, Ivor Macrae rose abruptly
from before the fire, saying that he would
speak <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'do'">no</ins> more that night. And truly enough
there was a wild, lone, desolate cry in the
wind, and a slapping of the waves one upon
the other with an eerie laughing sound, and
the screaming of a seamew that was like a
human thing.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span></p>
<p>So I touched the shawl of his mother, who
looked up with startled eyes and said, "God
be with us"; and then I opened the door, and
the salt smell of the wrack was in my nostrils,
and the great drowning blackness of the night.</p>
<p><br />When I was a child I used to throw offerings—small
coins, flowers, shells, even a
newly caught trout, once a treasured flint
arrow-head—into the sea-loch by which we
lived. My Hebridean nurse had often told
me of Shony, a mysterious sea-god, and I
know I spent much time in wasted adoration:
a fearful worship, not unmixed with disappointment
and some anger. Not once did I
see him. I was frighted time after time, but
the sudden cry of a heron, or the snort of a
pollack chasing the mackerel, or the abrupt
uplifting of a seal's head, became over-familiar,
and I desired terror, and could not find it
by the shore. Inland, after dusk, there was
always the mysterious multitude of shadow.
There too, I could hear the wind leaping and
growling. But by the shore I never knew any
dread, even in the darkest night. The sound
and company of the sea washed away all
fears.</p>
<p>I was amused not long ago to hear a little
girl singing, as she ran wading through the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span>
foam of a troubled sunlit sea, as it broke on
those wonderful white sands of Iona—</p>
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">"Shanny, Shanny, Shanny,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Catch my feet and tickle my toes!<br /></span>
<span class="i0">And if you can, Shanny, Shanny, Shanny,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">I'll go with you where no one knows!"</span>
</div></div>
<p>I have no doubt this daintier Shanny was my
old friend Shony, whose more terrifying way
was to clutch boats by the keel and drown the
sailors, and make a death-necklace of their
teeth. An evil Shony; for once he netted a
young girl who was swimming in a loch, and
when she would not give him her love he tied
her to a rock, and to this day her long brown
hair may be seen floating in the shallow green
wave at the ebb of the tide. One need not
name the place!</p>
<p>The Shanny song recalls to me an old
Gaelic alphabet rhyme, wherein a <ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both 'maighdean-mhara' and 'Maigh-deann-M'hara' were used in this text. This was retained."><i>Maigh-deann-M'hara</i></ins>,
or Mermaid, stood for M, and
a Suire (also a mermaid) stood for S; and
my long perplexities as to whether I would
know a shuera from a midianmara when I saw
either. It also recalls to me that it was from
a young schoolmaster priest, who had come
back from Ireland to die at home, that I first
heard of the Beth-Luis-Nuin, the Gaelic
equivalent of "the A B C." Every letter in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span>
the Gaelic alphabet is represented by a tree,
and <ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both 'Beite' and 'Beithe' were used in this text. This was retained.">Beithe</ins> and Luis and Nuin are the Birch,
the Rowan, and the Ash. The reason why
the alphabet is called the Beth-Luis-Nuin is
that B, L, N, and not A, B, C, are its first
three letters. It consists of eighteen letters—and
in ancient Gaelic seventeen, for H (the
Uath, or Whitethorn) does not exist there, I
believe: and these run, B, L, N, F, S (H),
D, T, C, M, G, P, R, A, O, U, E, I—each letter
represented by the name of a tree, Birch,
Rowan, Ash, etc. Properly, there is no C in
Gaelic, for though the letter C is common, it
has always the sound of K.</p>
<p>Since this page first appeared I have had
so many letters about the Gaelic alphabet of
to-day that I take the opportunity to add a few
lines. To-day as of old all the letters of the
Gaelic alphabet are called after trees, from
the oak to the shrub-like elder, with the exception
of G, T, and U, which stand for Ivy,
Furze and Heather. It no longer runs B, L,
N, etc., but in sequence follows the familiar
and among western peoples, universal A, B,
C, etc. It is, however, short of our Roman
alphabet by eight letters J, K, Q, V, W, X,
Y and Z. On the other hand, each of these
is represented, either by some other letter
having a like value or by a combination:<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span>
thus K is identical with C, which does not
exist in Gaelic as a soft sound any more than
it does in Greek, but only as the C in English
words such as <i>cat</i> or <i>cart</i>, or in combination
with h as a gutteral as in <i>loch</i>—while v as
common a sound in Gaelic as the hiss of s in
English exists in almost every second or third
word as <i>bh</i> or <i>mh</i>. The Gaelic A, B, C of
to-day, then, runs as follows: Ailm, <ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both 'Beite' and 'Beithe' were used in this text. This was retained.">Beite</ins>, Coll,
Durr, Eagh, Fearn, Gath, Huath, Togh, Luis,
Muin, Nuin, Oir, Peith, Ruis, Suil, Teine, Ur—which
again is equivalent to saying Elm,
Birch, Hazel, Oak, Aspen, Alder, Ivy, Whitethorn,
Yew, Rowan or Quicken, Vine, Ash,
Spindle-tree, Pine, Elder, Willow, Furze,
Heath.</p>
<p>The little girl who knew so much about
Shanny knew nothing about her own A B C.
But I owe her a debt, since through her I
came upon my good friend "Gunainm." From
her I heard first, there on Iona, on a chance
visit of a few summer days, of two of the most
beautiful of the ancient Gaelic hymns, the
Fiacc Hymn and the Hymn of Broccán. My
friend had delineated them as missals, with
a strangely beautiful design to each. How
often I have thought of one, illustrative of
a line in the Fiacc Hymn: "There was
pagan darkness in Eiré in those days: the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span>
people adored Faerie." In the Broccán
Hymn (composed by one Broccán in the
time of Lugaid, son of Loegaire, <span class="smcap">A.D.</span> 500)
is one particularly lovely line: "Victorious
Bride (Briget) loved not this vain world:
here, ever, she sat the seat of a bird on
a cliff."</p>
<p>In a dream I dream frequently, that of
being the wind, and drifting over fragrant
hedgerows and pastures, I have often, through
unconscious remembrance of that image of
St. Bride sitting the seat of a bird on the
edge of the cliff that is this world, felt
myself, when not lifted on sudden warm fans
of dusk, propelled as on a swift wing from
the edge of a precipice.</p>
<p>I would that we had these winds of dream
to command. I would, now that I am far
from it, that this night at least I might pass
over Iona, and hear the sea-doves by the ruins
making their sweet mournful croon of peace,
and lift, as a shadow gathering phantom
flowers, the pale orchis by the lapwing's nest.</p>
<p><br />One day, walking by a reedy lochan on the
Ross of Mull, not far inland from Fionnaphort,
where is the ferry for Baile-Mòr of
Iona, I met an old man who seemed in sorrow.
When he spoke I was puzzled by some words<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span>
which were not native there, and then I
learned that he had long lived in Edinburgh
and later in Dunfermline, and in his work
had associated with Hollanders and others of
the east seas.</p>
<p>He had come back, in his old age, to "see
the place of his two loves"—the hamlet in
Earraid, where his old mother had blessed
him "forty year back," and the little farm
where Jean Cameron had kissed him and
promised to be true. He had gone away as a
soldier, and news reached them of his death;
and when he came out of the Indies, and went
up Leith Walk to the great post-house in Edinburgh,
it was to learn that the Earraid cottage
was empty, and that Jean was no longer
Jean Cameron.</p>
<p>There was not a touch of bitterness in the
old man's words. "It was my name, for one
thing," he said simply: "you see, there's many
a 'J. Macdonald' in the Highland regiments;
and the mistake got about that way. No,
no—the dear lass wasna to blame. And I
never lost her love. When I found out where
she was I went to see her once more, an'
to tell her I understood, an' loved her all the
same. It was hard, in a way, when I found
she had made a loveless marriage, but human
nature's human nature, an' I could not<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span>
but be proud and glad that she had nane <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'bu'">but</ins>
puir Jamie Macdonald in her heart. I told
her I would be true to her, and since she
was poor, would help her, an' wi' God's
kindness true I was, an' helped her too. For
her man did an awfu' business one day, and
was sentenced for life. She had three bairns.
Well, I keepit her an' them—though I ne'er
saw them but once in the year, for she had
come back to the west, her heart brast with
the towns. First one bairn died, then another.
Then Jean died."</p>
<p>The old man resumed suddenly: "I had
put all my savings into the Grand North
Bank. When that failed I had nothing, for
with the little that was got back I bought a
good 'prenticeship for Jean's eldest. Since
then I've lived by odd jobs. But I'm old
now, an' broke. Every day an' every night
I think o' them two, my mother an' Jean."</p>
<p>"She must have been a leal fine woman," I
said, but in Gaelic. With a flash he looked at
me, and then said slowly, as if remembering,
"<i>Eudail de mhnathan an domhain</i>," "Treasure
of all the women in the world."</p>
<p>I have often thought of old "Jamie Macdonald"
since. How wonderful his deep
love! This man was loyal to his love in long
absence, and was not less loyal when he found<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span>
that she was the wife of another; and gave
up thought of home and comfort and companionship,
so that he might make life more
easy for her and the children that were not
his. He had no outer reward for this, nor
looked for any.</p>
<p>We crossed to Baile-Mòr together, and
when I came upon him next day by the <ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both 'Reilig' and 'Réilig' Odhrain were used in this text. This was retained.">Reilig</ins>
Odhrain, I asked him what he thought of
Iona.</p>
<p>He looked at the grey worn stones, "the
stairway of the kings," the tombs, the carved
crosses, the grey ruins of the wind-harried
cathedral, and with a wave of his hand, said
simply, "<i>Comunn mo ghaoil</i>," "'Tis a companionship
after my heart."</p>
<p>I do not doubt that the old man went on his
way comforted by the grey silence and grey
beauty of this ancient place, and that he found
in Iona what would be near him for the rest
of his days.</p>
<p><br />As a child I had some wise as well as
foolish instruction concerning the nations of
Faerie. If, in common with nearly all happy
children, I was brought up in intimate, even
in circumstantial, knowledge of "the fairies"—being
charitably taught, for one thing, so
that I have often left a little bowl of milk, a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span>
saucerful of oatcake and honey, and the like,
under a wooden seat, where they would be
sure to see it—I was told also of the <ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both 'Sìdhe' and 'Sidhe' were used in this text. This was retained.">Sìdhe</ins>,
often so rashly and ignorantly alluded to
as the fairies in the sense of a pretty,
diminutive, harmless, natural folk; and by
my nurse Barabal instructed in some of
the ways, spells, influences, and even appearances
of these powerful and mysterious
clans.</p>
<p>I do not think, unless as a very young
child, I ever confused them. I recollect well
my pleasure at a sign of gratitude. I was
fond of making little reed or bulrush or ash
flutes, but once I was in a place where these
were difficult to get, and I lost the only one
I had. That night I put aside a small portion
of my supper of bread and milk and honey,
and remember also the sacrifice of a gooseberry
of noble proportions, relinquished, not
without a sigh, in favour of any wandering
fairy lad.</p>
<p>Next morning when I ran out—three of us
then had a wild morning performance we
called some fantastic, forgotten name, and
ourselves the Sun-dancers—I saw by the
emptied saucer my little reed-flute! Here was
proof positive! I was so grateful for that
fairy's gratitude, that when dusk came again<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span>
I not only left a larger supper-dole than
usual, but, decked with white fox-glove bells
(in which I had unbounded faith), sat drenched
in the dew and played my little reed. Any
moment (I was sure) a small green fellow
would appear, and with wild indignation I
found myself snatched from the grass, and my
ears dinned now with reproaches about the
dew, now with remonstrances against "that
frightfu' reed-screeching that scared awa' the
varry hens."</p>
<p>Ah, there are souls that know nothing of
fairies, or music!</p>
<p>But the <ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both 'Sìdhe' and 'Sidhe' were used in this text. This was retained.">Sìdhe</ins> are a very different people
from the small clans of the earth's delight.</p>
<p>However (though I could write of both a
great volume), I have little to say of either
just now, except in one connection.</p>
<p>It is commonly said that the People of the
<ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both 'Sìdhe' and 'Sidhe' were used in this text. This was retained.">Sìdhe</ins> dwell within the hills, or in the underworld.
In some of the isles their home, now,
is spoken of as Tir-na-thonn, the Land of the
Wave, or Tir-fo-Tuinn, the Land under the
Sea.</p>
<p>But from a friend, an Islander of Iona, I
have learned many things, and among them,
that the Shee no longer dwell within the inland
hills, and that though many of them inhabit
the lonelier isles of the west, and in particular<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span>
The Seven Hunters, their Kingdom is in the
North.</p>
<p>Some say it is among the pathless mountains
of Iceland. But my friend spoke to an Iceland
man, and he said he had never seen them.
There were Secret People there, but not the
Gaelic <ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both 'Sìdhe' and 'Sidhe' were used in this text. This was retained.">Sìdhe</ins>.</p>
<p>Their Kingdom is in the North, under the
<i>Fir-Chlisneach</i>, the Dancing Men, as the
Hebrideans call the polar aurora. They are
always young there. Their bodies are white
as the wild swan, their hair yellow as honey,
their eyes blue as ice. Their feet leave no
mark on the snow. The women are white as
milk, with eyes like sloes, and lips like red
rowans. They fight with shadows, and are
glad; but the shadows are not shadows to
them. The Shee slay great numbers at the
full moon, but never hunt on moonless nights,
or at the rising of the moon, or when the dew
is falling. Their lances are made of reeds
that glitter like shafts of ice, and it is ill for a
mortal to find one of these lances, for it is
tipped with the salt of a wave that no living
thing has touched, neither the wailing mew
nor the finned sgádan nor his tribe, nor the
narwhal. There are no men of the human
clans there, and no shores, and the tides are
forbidden.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span></p>
<p>Long ago one of the monks of Columba
sailed there. He sailed for thrice seven days
till he lost the rocks of the north; and for
thrice thirty days, till Iceland in the south
was like a small bluebell in a great grey plain;
and for thrice three years among bergs. For
the first three years the finned things of the
sea brought him food; for the second three
years he knew the kindness of the creatures of
the air; in the last three years angels fed him.
He lived among the <ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both 'Sìdhe' and 'Sidhe' were used in this text. This was retained.">Sìdhe</ins> for three hundred
years. When he came back to Iona, he was
asked where he had been all that long night
since evensong to matins. The monks had
sought him everywhere, and at dawn had
found him lying in the hollow of the long
wave that washes Iona on the north. He
laughed at that, and said he had been on the
tops of the billows for nine years and three
months and twenty-one days, and for three
hundred years had lived among a deathless
people. He had drunk sweet ale every day,
and every day had known love among flowers
and green bushes, and at dusk had sung old
beautiful forgotten songs, and with star-flame
had lit strange fires, and at the full of the
moon had gone forth laughing to slay. It was
heaven, there, under the Lights of the North.
When he was asked how that people might<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span>
be known, he said that away from there they
had a cold, cold hand, a cold, still voice, and
cold ice-blue eyes. They had four cities at the
four ends of the green diamond that is the
world. That in the north was made of earth;
that in the east, of air; that in the south, of
fire; that in the west, of water. In the middle
of the green diamond that is the world is
the Glen of Precious Stones. It is in the
shape of a heart, and glows like a ruby,
though all stones and gems are there. It is
there the Sìdhe go to refresh their deathless
life.</p>
<p>The holy monks said that this kingdom was
certainly Ifurin, the Gaelic Hell. So they put
their comrade alive in a grave in the sand, and
stamped the sand down upon his head, and
sang hymns so that mayhap even yet his soul
might be saved, or, at least, that when he
went back to that place he might remember
other songs than those sung by the milk-white
women with eyes like sloes and lips red as
rowans. "Tell that honey-mouthed cruel
people they are in Hell," said the abbot,
"and give them my ban and my curse
unless they will cease laughing and loving
sinfully and slaying with bright lances, and
will come out of their secret places and be
baptized."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span></p>
<p>They have not yet come.</p>
<p>This adventurer of the dreaming mind is
another Oran, that fabulous Oran of whom the
later Columban legends tell. I think that other
Orans go out, even yet, to the Country of the
<ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both 'Sìdhe' and 'Sidhe' were used in this text. This was retained.">Sìdhe</ins>. But few come again. It must be hard
to find that glen at the heart of the green
diamond that is the world; but, when found,
harder to return by the way one came.</p>
<p><br />Once when I was sailing to Tiree, I stopped
at Iona, and went to see an old woman named
Giorsal. She was of my own people, and,
not being Iona-born, the islanders called her
the foreigner. She had a daughter named
Ealàsaidh, or Elsie as it is generally given in
English, and I wanted to see her even more
than the old woman.</p>
<p>"Where is Elsie?" I asked, after our
greetings were done.</p>
<p>Giorsal looked at me sidelong, and then
shifted the kettle, and busied herself with the
teapot.</p>
<p>I repeated the question.</p>
<p>"She is gone," the old woman said, without
looking at me.</p>
<p>"Gone? Where has she gone to?"</p>
<p>"I might as well ask you to tell me that."</p>
<p>"Is she married ... had she a lover ...<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span>
or ... or ... do you mean that she ...
that you ... have lost her?"</p>
<p>"She's gone. That's all I know. But she
isn't married, so far as I know: an' I never
knew any man she fancied: an' neither I nor
any other on Iona has seen her dead body; an'
by St. Martin's Cross, neither I nor any other
saw her leave the island. And that was more
than a year ago."</p>
<p>"But, Giorsal, she must have left Iona and
gone to Mull, or maybe gone away in a
steamer, or——"</p>
<p>"It was in midwinter, an' when a heavy gale
was tearing through the Sound. There was no
steamer an' no boat that day. There isn't a
boat of Iona that could have taken the sea that
day. And no—Elsie wasna drowned. I see
that's what's in your mind. She just went out
o' the house again cryin'. I asked her what
was wrong wi' her. She turned an' smiled, an'
because o' that terrifying smile I couldna say a
word. She went up behind the Ruins, an' no
one saw her after that but Ian Donn. He saw
her among the bulrushes in the swamp over by
Staonaig. She was laughing an' talking to the
reeds, or to the wind in the reeds. So Ian
Donn says."</p>
<p>"And what do <i>you</i> say, Giorsal?"</p>
<p>The old woman went to the door, looked<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span>
out, and closed it. When she returned, she
put another bit on the fire, and kept her gaze
on the red glow.</p>
<p>"Do you know much about them old Iona
monks?" she asked abruptly.</p>
<p>"What old monks?"</p>
<p>"Them as they call the Culdees. You used
to be askin' lots o' questions about them.
Ay? well ... they aye hated folk from the
North, an' women-folk above all."</p>
<p>I waited, silent.</p>
<p>"And Elsie, poor lass, she hated them in
turn. She was all for the wild clansmen out
o' Skye and the Long Island. She said she
wished the Siól Leoid had come to Iona
before Colum built the big church. And for
why? Well, there's this, for one thing: For
months a monk had come to her o' nights in
her sleep, an' said he would kill her, because
she was a heathen. She went to the minister
at last, an' said her say. He told her she was
a foolish wench, an' was sore angry with
her. So then she went to old Mary Gillespie,
out by the lochan beyond Fionnaphort on
the Ross yonder—her that has the sight
an' a power o' the old wisdom. After that
she took to meeting friends in the moonshine."</p>
<p>"Friends?"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span></p>
<p>"Ay. There's no call to name names.
One day she told me that she had been bidden
to go over to them. If she didn't, the monks
would kill her, they said. The monks are still
the strongest here, they told her, or she me,
I forget which. That is, except over by
Staonaig. Up between Sgéur Iolaire and
Cnoc Druidean there's a path that no monk
can go. There, in the old days, they burned
a woman. She was not a woman, but they
thought she was. She was one o' the Sorrows
of the Sheen, that they put out to suffer for
them, an' get the mortal ill. That's the plague
to <i>them</i>. It's ill to any that brings harm on
<i>them</i>. That's why the monks arena strong
over by Staonaig way. But I told my girl
not to mind. She was safe wi' me, I said.
She said that was true. For weeks I heard no
more o' that monk. One night Elsie came
in smiling an' pluckin' wild roses. "<i>Breisleach</i>!"
I cried, "what's the meanin' o' roses
in January?" She looked at me, frighted,
an' said nothin', but threw the things on the
fire. It was next day she went away."</p>
<p>"And——"</p>
<p>"An' that's all. Here's the tea. Ay, an'
for sure here's my good man. <i>Whist</i>, now!
Rob, do you see who's here?"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span></p>
<p>Nothing is more strange than the confused
survival of legends and pagan faiths and early
Christian beliefs, such as may be found still
in some of the isles. A Tiree man, whom I
met some time ago on the boat that was
taking us both to the west, told me there's a
story that Mary Magdalene lies in a cave in
Iona. She roamed the world with a blind
man who loved her, but they had no sin. One
day they came to Knoidart in Argyll. Mary
Magdalene's first husband had tracked her
there, and she knew that he would kill the
blind man. So she bade him lie down among
some swine, and she herself herded them.
But her husband came and laughed at her.
"That is a fine boar you have there," he said.
Then he put a spear through the blind man.
"Now I will take your beautiful hair," he said.
He did this and went away. She wept till she
died. One of Colum's monks found her, and
took her to Iona, and she was buried in a cave.
No one but Colum knew who she was. Colum
sent away the man, because he was always
mooning and lamenting. She had a great
wonderful beauty to her.</p>
<p>It is characteristic enough, even to the quaint
confusion that could make Mary Magdalene
and St. Columba contemporary. But as for
the story, what is it but the universal Gaelic<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span>
legend of Diarmid and Grania? They too
wandered far to escape the avenger. It does
not matter that their "beds" are shown in
rock and moor, from Glenmoriston to Loch
Awe, from Lora Water to West Loch Tarbert,
with an authenticity as absolute as that which
discovers them almost anywhere between
Donegal and Clare; nor that the death-place
has many sites betwixt Argyll and Connemara.
In Gaelic Scotland every one knows that
Diarmid was wounded to the death on the
rocky ground between Tarbert of Loch Fyne
and the West Loch. Every one knows the
part the boar played, and the part Finn
played.</p>
<p>Doubtless the story came by way of the
Shannon to the Loch of Shadows, or from
Cuchullin's land to Dûn Sobhairce on the Antrim
coast, and thence to the Scottish mainland.
In wandering to the isles, it lost something
both of Eiré and Alba. The Campbells, too,
claimed Diarmid; and so the Hebrideans
would as soon forget him. So, there, by one
byplay of the mind or another, it survived in
changing raiment. Perhaps an islesman had
heard a strange legend about Mary Magdalene,
and so named Grania anew. Perhaps a story-teller
consciously wove it the new way.
Perhaps an Iona man, hearing the tale in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span>
distant Barra or Uist, in Coll or Tiree,
"buried" Mary in a cave of Icolmkill.</p>
<p>The notable thing is, not that a primitive
legend should love fantastic raiment, but that
it should be so much alike, where the Syrian
wanders from waste to waste, by the camp-fires
of the Basque muleteers, and in the rainy
lands of the Gael.</p>
<p>In Mingulay, one of the south isles of the
Hebrides, in South Uist, and in Iona, I have
heard a practically identical tale told with
striking variations. It is a tale so wide-spread
that it has given rise to a pathetic
proverb, "Is mairg a loisgeadh a <ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both 'chlarsach' and 'chlarsaich' were used in this text. This was retained.">chlarsach</ins>
dut," "Pity on him who would burn the harp
for you."</p>
<p>In Mingulay, the "harper" who broke his
"harp" for a woman's love was a young man,
a fiddler. For three years he wandered out of
the west into the east, and when he had made
enough money to buy a good share in a fishing-boat,
or even a boat itself, he came back to
Mingulay. When he reached his Mary's cottage,
at dusk, he played her favourite air, an
"oran leannanachd," but when she came out it
was with a silver ring on her left hand and a
baby in her arms. Thus poor Padruig Macneill
knew Mary had broken her troth and
married another man, and so he went down<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span>
to the shore and played a "marbh-rann," and
then broke his fiddle on the rocks; and when
they came upon them in the morning he had
the strings of it round his neck. In Uist, the
instrument is more vaguely called a "tiompan,"
and here, on a bitter cold night in a famine
time, the musician breaks it so as to feed the
fire to warm his wife—a sacrifice ill repaid by
the elopement of the hard woman that night.
In Iona, the tale is of an Irish piper who came
over to Icolmkill on a pilgrimage, and to lay
his "peeb-h'yanna"<a name="FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> on "the holy stones";
but, when there, he got word that his young
wife was ill, so he "made a loan of his clar,"
and with the money returned to Derry, only
to find that his dear had gone away with a
soldier for the Americas.</p>
<p>The legendary history of Iona would be as
much Pagan as Christian. To-day, at many
a <i>ceilidh</i> by the warm hearths in winter, one
may hear allusions to the Scandinavian pirates,
or to their more ancient and obscure kin,
the Fomór.... The Fomór or Fomórians
were a people that lived before the Gael, and
had their habitations on the isles: fierce
prowlers of the sea, who loved darkness and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span>
cold and storm, and drove herds of wolves
across the deeps. In other words, they were
elemental forces. But the name is sometimes
used for the Norse pirates who ravaged the
west, from the Lews to the town of the
Hurdle-ford.</p>
<p>In poetic narration "the men of Lochlin"
occurs oftener: sometimes the Summer-sailors,
as the Vikings called themselves; sometimes,
perhaps oftenest, the Danes. The Vikings
have left numerous personal names among
the islanders, notably the general term
"summer-sailors," <i>somerlédi</i>, which survives
as Somerled. Many Macleods and Macdonalds
are called Somerled, Torquil (also Torcall,
Thorkill), and Mànus (Magnus), and in the
Hebrides surnames such as Odrum betray a
Norse origin. A glance at any good map
will reveal how largely the capes and promontories
and headlands, and small bays and
havens of the west, remember the lords of
the Suderöer.</p>
<p>The fascination of this legendary history is
in its contrast of the barbaric and the spiritual.
Since I was a child I have been held spellbound
by this singular union. To see the
Virgin Mary in the sombre and terrible figure
of the Washer of the Ford, or spiritual destiny
in that of the Woman with the Net, was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span>
natural: as to believe that the same Columba
could be as tender as St. Bride or gentle as
St. Francis, and yet could thrust the living
Oran back into his grave, or prophesy, as
though himself a believer in the druidic
wisdom, by the barking of a favourite hound
that had a white spot on his forehead—<i>Donnalaich
chon chinain</i>.</p>
<p><br />Of this characteristic blending of pagan
and Christian thought and legend I have tried
elsewhere to convey some sense—oftener,
perhaps, have instinctively expressed: and
here, as they are apposite to Iona, I would
like to select some pages as representative of
three phases—namely, of the barbaric history
of Iona, of the primitive spiritual history
which is so childlike in its simplicity, and of
that direct grafting of Christian thought and
imagery upon pagan thought and imagery
which at one time, and doubtless for many
generations (for it still survives), was a normal
unconscious method. Some five years ago
I wrote three short Columban stories, collectively
called <i>The Three Marvels of Iona</i>, one
named "The Festival of the Birds," another
"The Sabbath of the Fishes and the Flies,"
and the third "The Moon-Child." It is
the second of these that, somewhat altered<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span>
to its present use by running into it part of
another Columban tale, I add now.</p>
<p><br />Before dawn, on the morning of the hundredth
Sabbath after Colum the White had
made glory to God in Hy, that was theretofore
called Ioua, or the Druid Isle, and is
now Iona, the saint beheld his own sleep in a
vision.</p>
<p>Much fasting and long pondering over the
missals, with their golden and azure and sea-green
initials and earth-brown branching letters,
had made Colum weary. He had brooded
much of late upon the mystery of the living
world that was not man's world.</p>
<p>On the eve of that hundredth Sabbath,
which was to be a holy festival in Iona, he
had talked long with an ancient greybeard
out of a remote isle in the north, the wild
Isle of the Mountains, where Scathach the
queen hanged the men of Lochlin by their
yellow hair.</p>
<p>This man's name was Ardan, and he was
of the ancient people. He had come to Iona
because of two things. Maolmòr, the king of
the northern Picts, had sent him to learn of
Colum what was this god-teaching he had
brought out of Eiré: and for himself he had
come when old age was upon him, to see what<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span>
manner of man this Colum was, who had made
Ioua, that was "Innis-nan-Dhruidhnean"—the
Isle of the Druids—into a place of new
worship.</p>
<p>For three hours Ardan and Colum had
walked by the sea-shore. Each learned of the
other. Ardan bowed his head before the
wisdom. Colum knew in his heart that the
Druid saw mysteries.</p>
<p>In the first hour they talked of God.</p>
<p>"Ay, sure: and now," said the saint, "O
Ardan the wise, is my God thy God?"</p>
<p>At that Ardan turned his eyes to the west.
With his right hand he pointed to the sun that
was like a great golden flower. "Truly, He
is thy God and my God." Colum was silent.
Then he said: "Thee and thine, O Ardan,
from Maolmòr the Pictish king to the least
of his slaves, shall have a long weariness in
Hell. That fiery globe yonder is but the Lamp
of the World: and sad is the case of the man
who knows not the torch from the torch-bearer."</p>
<p>In the second hour they talked of Man.
While Ardan spoke, Colum smiled in his deep,
grey eyes.</p>
<p>"It is for laughter that," he said, when
Ardan ceased.</p>
<p>"And why will that be, O Colum Cille?"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span>
Ardan asked. Then the smile went out of
Colum's grey eyes, and he turned and looked
about him.</p>
<p>He saw near, a crow, a horse, and a hound.</p>
<p>"These are thy brethren," he said scornfully.</p>
<p>But Ardan answered quietly, "Even so."</p>
<p>The third hour they talked about the beasts
of the earth and the fowls of the air.</p>
<p>At the last Ardan said: "The ancient
wisdom hath it that these are the souls of
men and women that have been, or are to be."
Whereat Colum answered: "The new wisdom,
that is old as eternity, declareth that God
created all things in love. Therefore are we
at one, O Ardan, though we sail to the Isle
of Truth from the west and the east. Let
there be peace between us." "Peace," said
Ardan.</p>
<p>That eve, Ardan of the Picts sat with the
monks of Iona.</p>
<p>Colum blessed him and said a saying. Cathal
of the Songs sang a hymn of beauty. Ardan
rose, and put the wine of guests to his lips, and
chanted this rann:</p>
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">O Colum and monks of Christ,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">It is peace we are having this night:<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Sure, peace is a good thing,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">And I am glad with the gladness.</span>
</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">We worship one God,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Though ye call him Dia—<br /></span>
<span class="i0">And I say not, O Dè!<br /></span>
<span class="i0">But cry <i>Bea'uil Bêl</i>!</span>
</div><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">For it is one faith for man,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">And one for the living world,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">And no man is wiser than another—<br /></span>
<span class="i0">And none knoweth much.</span>
</div><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">None knoweth a better thing than this:<br /></span>
<span class="i0">The Sword, Love, Song, Honour, Sleep.<br /></span>
<span class="i0">None knoweth a surer thing than this:<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Birth, Sorrow, Pain, Weariness, Death.</span>
</div><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">Sure, peace is a good thing;<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Let us be glad of peace:<br /></span>
<span class="i0">We are not men of the Sword,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">But of the Rune and the Wisdom.</span>
</div><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">I have learned a truth of Colum,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">And he hath learned of me:<br /></span>
<span class="i0">All ye on the morrow shall see<br /></span>
<span class="i0">A wonder of the wonders.</span>
</div></div>
<p>Ardan would say no more after that, though
all besought him. Many pondered long that
night. Cathal made a song of mystery. Colum
brooded through the dark; but before dawn
he fell asleep upon the fern that strewed his
cell. At dawn, with waking eyes, and weary,
he saw his Sleep in a vision.</p>
<p>It stood grey and wan beside him.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span></p>
<p>"What art thou, O Spirit?" he said.</p>
<p>"I am thy Sleep, Colum."</p>
<p>"And is it peace?"</p>
<p>"It is peace."</p>
<p>"What wouldst thou?"</p>
<p>"I have wisdom. Thy mind and thy soul
were closed. I could not give what I brought.
I brought wisdom."</p>
<p>"Give it."</p>
<p>"Behold!"</p>
<p>And Colum, sitting upon the strewed fern
that was his bed, rubbed his eyes that were
heavy with weariness and fasting and long
prayer. He could not see his Sleep now. It
was gone as smoke that is licked up by the
wind....</p>
<p>For three days thereafter Colum fasted,
save for a handful of meal at dawn, a piece
of rye-bread at noon, and a mouthful of dulse
and spring-water at <ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both 'sun-down' and 'sundown' were used in this text. This was retained.">sun-down</ins>. On the night
of the third day, Oran and Keir came to him
in his cell. Colum was on his knees lost
in prayer. No sound was there, save the
faint whispered muttering of his lips and
on the plastered wall the weary buzzing of
a fly.</p>
<p>"Holy One!" said Oran in a low voice, soft
with pity and awe; "Holy One!"</p>
<p>But Colum took no notice. His lips still<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span>
moved, and the tangled hairs below his nether
lip shivered with his failing breath.</p>
<p>"Father!" said Keir, tender as a woman;
"Father!"</p>
<p>Colum did not turn his eyes from the wall.
The fly droned his drowsy hum upon the
rough plaster. It crawled wearily for a
space, then stopped. The slow hot drone filled
the cell.</p>
<p>"Father," said Oran, "it is the will of the
brethren that thou shouldst break thy fast.
Thou art old, and God has thy glory. Give us
peace."</p>
<p>"Father," urged Keir, seeing that Colum
kneeled unnoticingly, his lips still moving
above his grey beard, with the white hair of
him falling about his head like a snowdrift
slipping from a boulder. "Father, be pitiful!
We hunger and thirst for thy presence. We
can fast no longer, yet we have no heart to
break our fast if thou art not with us. Come,
holy one, and be of our company, and
eat of the good broiled fish that awaiteth
us. We perish for the benediction of thine
eyes."</p>
<p>Then it was that Colum rose, and walked
slowly towards the wall.</p>
<p>"Little black beast," he said to the fly that
droned its drowsy hum and moved not at all;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span>
"little black beast, sure it is well I am knowing
what you are. You are thinking you are going
to get my blessing, you that have come out of
hell for the soul of me!"</p>
<p>At that the fly flew heavily from the wall, and
slowly circled round and round the head of
Colum the White.</p>
<p>"What think ye of that, brother Oran,
brother Keir?" he asked in a low voice, hoarse
because of his long fast and the weariness that
was upon him.</p>
<p>"It is a fiend," said Oran.</p>
<p>"It is an angel," said Keir.</p>
<p>Thereupon the fly settled upon the wall again,
and again droned his drowsy hot hum.</p>
<p>"Little black beast," said Colum, with the
frown coming down into his eyes, "is it for
peace you are here, or for sin? Answer, I
conjure you in the name of the Father, the Son,
and the Holy Ghost!"</p>
<p>"<i>An ainn an Athar, 's an Mhic, 's an
Spioraid Naoimh</i>," repeated Oran below his
breath.</p>
<p>"<i>An ainn an Athar, 's an Mhic, 's an Spioraid
Naoimh</i>," repeated Keir below his breath.</p>
<p>Then the fly that was upon the wall flew
up to the roof and circled to and fro. And
it sang a beautiful song, and its song was
this:<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span></p>
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">Praise be to God, and a blessing too at that, and a blessing!<br /></span>
<span class="i0">For Colum the White, Colum the Dove, hath worshipped;<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Yea, he hath worshipped and made of a desert a garden,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">And out of the dung of men's souls have made a sweet savour of burning.</span>
</div><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">A savour of burning, most sweet, a fire for the altar,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">This he hath made in the desert; the hell-saved all gladden.<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Sure he hath put his benison, too, on milch-cow and bullock,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">On the fowls of the air, and the man-eyed seals, and the otter.</span>
</div><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">But high in His Dûn in the great blue mainland of heaven,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">God the All-Father broodeth, where the harpers are harping His glory:<br /></span>
<span class="i0">There where He sitteth, where a river of ale poureth ever,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">His great sword broken, His spear in the dust, He broodeth.</span>
</div><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">And this is the thought that moves in his brain, as a cloud filled with thunder<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Moves through the vast hollow sky filled with the dust of the stars—<br /></span>
<span class="i0">"What boots it the glory of Colum, when he maketh a Sabbath to bless me,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">And hath no thought of my sons in the deeps of the air and the sea?"</span>
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span></div></div>
<p>And with that the fly passed from their
vision. In the cell was a most wondrous
sweet song, like the sound of far-off pipes
over water.</p>
<p>Oran said in a low voice of awe, "O God,
our God!"</p>
<p>Keir whispered, white with fear, "O God,
my God!"</p>
<p>But Colum rose, and took a scourge from
where it hung on the wall. "It shall be for
peace, Oran," he said, with a grim smile flitting
like a bird above the nest of his grey beard;
"it shall be for peace, Keir!"</p>
<p>And with that he laid the scourge heavily
upon the bent backs of Keir and Oran, nor
stayed his hand, nor let his three days' fast
weaken the deep piety that was in the might
of his arm, and because of the glory of
God.</p>
<p>Then, when he was weary, peace came into
his heart, and he sighed <i>Amen</i>!"</p>
<p>"Amen!" said Oran the monk.</p>
<p>"Amen!" said Keir the monk.</p>
<p>"And this thing has been done," said Colum,
"because of your evil wish and the brethren,
that I should break my fast, and eat of fish, till
God will it. And lo, I have learned a mystery.
Ye shall all witness to it on the morrow, which
is the Sabbath."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span></p>
<p>That night the monks wondered much.
Only Oran and Keir cursed the fishes in the
deeps of the sea and the flies in the deeps of
the air.</p>
<p>On the morrow, when the sun was yellow
on the brown <ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both 'sea-weed' and 'seaweed' were used in this text. This was retained.">seaweed</ins>, and there was peace
on the isle and upon the waters, Colum and
the brotherhood went slowly towards the
sea.</p>
<p>At the meadows that are close to the
sea, the saint stood still. All bowed their
heads.</p>
<p>"O winged things of the air," cried Colum,
"draw near!"</p>
<p>With that the air was full of the hum of
innumerous flies, midges, bees, wasps, moths,
and all winged insects. These settled upon
the monks, who moved not, but praised God
in silence.</p>
<p>"Glory and praise to God," cried Colum,
"behold the Sabbath of the children of God
that inhabit the deeps of the air! Blessing
and peace be upon them."</p>
<p>"Peace! Peace!" cried the monks, with
one voice.</p>
<p>"In the name of the Father, the Son, and
the Holy Ghost!" cried Colum the White,
glad because of the glory to God.</p>
<p>"<i>An ainn an Athar, 's an Mhic, 's an Spioraid
Naoimh</i>,"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span> cried the monks, bowing
reverently, and Oran and Keir deepest of all,
because they saw the fly that was of Colum's
cell leading the whole host, as though it were
its captain, and singing to them a marvellous
sweet song.</p>
<p>Oran and Keir testified to this thing, and
all were full of awe and wonder, and Colum
praised God.</p>
<p>Then the saints and the brotherhood moved
onward and went upon the rocks. When all
stood ankle-deep in the <ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both 'sea-weed' and 'seaweed' were used in this text. This was retained.">seaweed</ins> that was
swaying in the tide, Colum cried:</p>
<p>"O finny creatures of the deep, draw
near!"</p>
<p>And with that the whole sea shimmered as
with silver and gold. All the fishes of the
sea, and the great eels, and the lobsters and
the crabs, came in a swift and terrible procession.
Great was the glory.</p>
<p>Then Colum cried, "O fishes of the deep,
who is your king?" Whereupon the herring,
the mackerel, and the dogfish swam forward,
and each claimed to be king. But the echo
that ran from wave to wave said, <i>The Herring
is King</i>!</p>
<p>Then Colum said to the mackerel, "Sing the
song that is upon you."</p>
<p>And the mackerel sang the song of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span>
wild rovers of the sea, and the lust of
pleasure.</p>
<p>Then Colum said, "But for God's mercy, I
would curse you, O false fish."</p>
<p>Then he spoke likewise to the dogfish, and
the dogfish sang of slaughter and the chase,
and the joy of blood.</p>
<p>And Colum said, "Hell shall be your
portion."</p>
<p>Then there was peace. And the herring
said:</p>
<p>"In the name of the Father, the Son, and
the Holy Ghost."</p>
<p>Whereat all that mighty multitude, before
they sank into the deep, waved their fins and
their claws, each after its kind, and repeated as
with one voice:</p>
<p>"<i>An ain ann Athar, 's an Mhic, 's an Spioraid Naoimh!</i>"</p>
<p>And the glory that was upon the Sound of
Iona was as though God trailed a starry net
upon the waters, with a shining star in every
little hollow, and a flowing moon of gold on
every wave.</p>
<p>Then <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'Colnm'">Colum</ins> the White put out both his
arms, and blessed the children of God that
are in the deeps of the sea and that are in the
deeps of the air.</p>
<p>That is how Sabbath came upon all living<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span>
things upon Ioua that is called Iona, and
within the air above Ioua, and within the sea
that is around Ioua.</p>
<p>And the glory is Colum's.</p>
<p><br />To illustrate the history of the island I
select the following episode from <i>Barbaric
Tales</i>. It deals with The Flight of the Culdees.
The name culdee is somewhat loosely used
both by mediæval and modern writers, for
it does not appear to have been given to the
Brotherhood of the Columban Church till two
hundred years after Columba's death. The
word may be taken to mean the Cleric of
God; perhaps, later, it was the equivalent of
anchorite. This episode is, in date, about <span class="smcap">A.D.</span>
800 or soon after.</p>
<p><br />On the wane of the moon, on the day following
the ruin of Bail'-tiorail, sails were
seen far east of Stromness.</p>
<p>Olaus the White called his men together.
The boats coming before the wind were
doubtless his own galleys which he had lost
when the south-gale had blown them against
Skye; but no man can know when and how
the gods may smile grimly, and let the swords
that whirl be broken, or the spears that are
flat become a hedge of death.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span></p>
<p>An hour later, a startled word went from
viking to viking. The galleys in the offing
were the fleet of Sweno the Hammerer. Why
had he come so far southward, and why were
oars so swift and the stained sails distended
before the wind? They were soon to know.</p>
<p>Sweno himself was the first to land. A
great man he was, broad and burly, with a
sword-slash across his face that brought his
brows in a perpetual frown above his savage
blood-shot eyes.</p>
<p>In few words he told how he had met a
galley, with only half its crew, and of these
many who were wounded. It was the last of
the fleet of Haco the Laugher. A fleet of
fifteen war-birlinns had set out from the Long
Island, and had given battle. Haco had gone
into the strife, laughing loud as was his wont,
and he and all his men had the berserk rage,
and fought with joy and foam at the mouth.
Never had the Sword sung a sweeter song.</p>
<p>"Well," said Olaus the White grimly,
"well, how did the Raven fly?"</p>
<p>"When Haco laughed for the last time, his
sword waving out of the death-tide where he
sank, there was only one galley left. No
more than nine vikings lived thereafter to tell
the tale. These nine we took out of their
boat, which was below waves soon. Haco and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span>
his men are all fighting the sea-shadows by
now."</p>
<p>A loud snarling went from man to man.
This became a cry of rage. Then savage
shouts filled the air. Swords were lifted up
against the sky; and the fierce glitter of blue
eyes and the bristling of tawny beards were
fair to see, thought the captive women, though
their hearts beat in their breasts like eaglets
behind the bars of a cage.</p>
<p>Sweno the Hammerer frowned a deep frown
when he heard that Olaus was there with only
the <i>Svart-Alf</i> out of the galleys which had
gone the southward way.</p>
<p>"If the islanders come upon us now with
their birlinns we shall have to make a running
fight," he said.</p>
<p>Olaus laughed.</p>
<p>"Ay, but the running shall be after the
birlinns, Sweno."</p>
<p>"I hear there are fifty and nine men of
these Culdees yonder under the sword-priest,
Maoliosa?"</p>
<p>"It is a true word. But to-night, after the
moon is up, there shall be none."</p>
<p>At that, all who heard laughed, and were
less heavy in their hearts because of the slaying
and drowning of Haco the Laugher and all his
crew.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span></p>
<p>"Where is the woman Brenda that you
took?" Olaus asked, as he stared at Sweno's
boat and saw no woman there.</p>
<p>"She is in the sea."</p>
<p>Olaus the White looked. It was his eyes
that asked.</p>
<p>"I flung her into the sea because she
laughed when she heard of how the birlinns
that were under Somhairle the Renegade
drove in upon our ships, and how Haco
laughed no more, and the sea was red with
viking blood."</p>
<p>"She was a woman, Sweno—and none
more fair in the isles, after Morna that is
mine."</p>
<p>"Woman or no woman, I flung her into the
sea. The Gael call us Gall: then I will let no
Gael laugh at the Gall. It is enough. She is
drowned. There are always women: one
here, one there—it is but a wave blown this
way or that."</p>
<p>At this moment a viking came running
across the ruined town with tidings. Maoliosa
and his culdees were crowding into a great
birlinn. Perhaps they were coming to give
battle: perhaps they were for sailing away
from that place.</p>
<p>Olaus and Sweno stared across the fjord.
At first they knew not what to do. If Maoliosa<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span>
thought of battle he would hardly choose that
hour and place. Or was it that he knew the
Gael were coming in force, and that the vikings
were caught in a trap?</p>
<p>At last it was clear. Sweno gave a great
laugh.</p>
<p>"By the blood of Odin," he cried, "they
come to sue for peace!"</p>
<p>Filled with white-robed culdees, the birlinn
drew slowly across the loch. A tall, old man
stood at the prow, with streaming hair and
beard, white as sea-foam. In his right hand
he grasped a great Cross, whereon Christ was
crucified.</p>
<p>The vikings drew close to one another.</p>
<p>"Hail them in their own tongue, Sweno,"
said Olaus.</p>
<p>The Hammerer moved to the water-edge,
as the birlinn stopped, a short arrow-flight
away.</p>
<p>"Ho, there, priests of the Christ-faith!"</p>
<p>"What would you, viking?" It was Maoliosa
himself that spoke.</p>
<p>"Why do you come here among us, you that
are Maoliosa?"</p>
<p>"To win you and yours to God, Pagan."</p>
<p>"Is it madness that is upon you, old man?
We have swords and spears here, if we lack
hymns and prayers."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span></p>
<p>All this time Olaus kept a wary watch inland
and seaward, for he feared that Maoliosa came
because of an ambush.</p>
<p>Truly the old monk was mad. He had told
his culdees that God would prevail, and that
the pagans would melt away before the Cross.
The ebb-tide was running swift. Even while
Sweno spoke, the birlinn touched a low sea-hidden
ledge of rock. A cry of consternation
went up from the white-robes. Loud laughter
came from the vikings.</p>
<p>"Arrows!" cried Olaus.</p>
<p>With that threescore men took their bows.
A hail of death-shafts fell. Many pierced the
water, but some pierced the necks and hearts
of the culdees.</p>
<p>Maoliosa himself, stood in death transfixed
to the mast. With a scream the monks swept
their oars backward. Then they leaped to
their feet, and changed their place, and rowed
for life.</p>
<p>The summer-sailors sprang into their galley.
Sweno the Hammerer was at the bow. The
foam curled and hissed. The birlinn of the
culdees grided upon the opposite shore at
the moment when Sweno brought down his
battle-axe upon the monk who steered. The
man was cleft to the shoulder. Sweno swayed
with the blow, stumbled, and fell headlong<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span>
into the sea. A culdee thrust at him with an
oar, and pinned him among the sea-tangle.
Thus died Sweno the Hammerer.</p>
<p>Like a flock of sheep the white-robes leaped
upon the shore. Yet Olaus was quicker than
they. With a score of vikings he raced to the
Church of the Cells, and gained the sanctuary.
The monks uttered a cry of despair, and,
turning, fled across the sands. Olaus counted
them. There were now forty in all.</p>
<p>"Let forty men follow," he cried.</p>
<p>The monks fled this way and that. Olaus,
and those who watched, laughed to see how
they stumbled, because of their robes. One
by one fell, sword-cleft or spear-thrust. The
sand-dunes were red.</p>
<p>Soon there were fewer than a score—then
twelve only—ten!</p>
<p>"Bring them back!" Olaus shouted.</p>
<p>When the ten fugitives were captured and
brought back, Olaus took the crucifix that
Maoliosa had raised, and held it before each in
turn.</p>
<p>"Smite!" he said to the first monk. But
the man would not.</p>
<p>"Smite!" he said to the second; but he
would not. And so it was to the tenth.</p>
<p>"Good!" said Olaus the White; "they shall
witness to their God."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span></p>
<p>With that he bade his vikings break up the
birlinn, and drive the planks into the ground
and shore them up with logs. When this was
done he crucified each culdee. With nails and
with ropes he did unto each what their God
had suffered. Then all were left there by the
water-side.</p>
<p>That night, when Olaus the White and the
laughing Morna left the great bonfire where
the vikings sang and drank horn after horn
of strong ale, they stood and looked across
the strait. In the moonlight, upon the dim
verge of the island shore, they could see ten
crosses. On each was a motionless white
splatch.</p>
<p><br />Once more, for an instance of the grafting
of Christian thought and imagery on pagan
thought and imagery, I take a few pages of
the introductory part to the story of "The
Woman with the Net," in a later volume.<a name="FNanchor_6_6" id="FNanchor_6_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a>
They tell of a young monk who, inspired by
Colum's holy example, went out of Iona as
a missionary to the Pictish heathen of the
north.</p>
<p><br />When Artân had kissed the brow of every
white-robed brother on Iona, and had been<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span>
thrice kissed by the aged Colum, his heart
was filled with gladness.</p>
<p>It was late summer, and in the afternoon-light
peace lay on the green waters of the
Sound, on the green grass of the dunes, on
the domed wicker-woven cells of the culdees
over whom the holy Colum ruled, and on
the little rock-strewn hill which rose above
where stood Colum's wattled church of sun-baked
mud. The abbot walked slowly by the
side of the young man. Colum was tall,
with hair long and heavy but white as the
canna, and with a beard that hung low on
his breast, grey as the moss on old firs. His
blue eyes were tender. The youth—for
though he was a grown man he seemed a
youth beside Colum—had beauty. He was
tall and comely, with yellow curling hair, and
dark-blue eyes, and a skin so white that it
troubled some of the monks who dreamed
old dreams and washed them away in tears
and scourgings.</p>
<p>"You have the bitter fever of youth upon
you, Artân," said Colum, as they crossed the
dunes beyond Dûn-I; "but you have no fear,
and you will be a flame among these Pictish
idolaters, and you will be a lamp to show
them the way."</p>
<p>"And when I come again, there will be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span>
clappings of hands, and hymns, and many
rejoicings?"</p>
<p>"I do not think you will come again," said
Colum. "The wild people of these northlands
will burn you, or crucify you, or put
you upon the crahslat, or give you thirst
and hunger till you die. It will be a great
joy for you to die like that, Artân, my
son?"</p>
<p>"Ay, a great joy," answered the young
monk, but with his eyes dreaming away from
his words.</p>
<p>Silence was between them as they neared
the cove where a large coracle lay, with three
men in it.</p>
<p>"Will God be coming to Iona when I am
away?" asked Artân.</p>
<p>Colum stared at him.</p>
<p>"Is it likely that God would come here in a
coracle?" he asked, with scornful eyes.</p>
<p>The young man looked abashed. For
sure, God would not come in a coracle, just
as he himself might come. He knew by that
how Colum had reproved him. He would
come in a cloud of fire, and would be seen
from far and near. Artân wondered if the
place he was going to was too far north for
him to see that greatness; but he feared to
ask.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span></p>
<p>"Give me a new name," he asked; "give me
a new name, my father."</p>
<p>"What name will you have?"</p>
<p>"Servant of Mary."</p>
<p>"So be it, Artân Gille-Mhoire."</p>
<p>With that Colum kissed him and bade farewell,
and Artân sat down in the coracle, and
covered his head with his mantle, and wept
and prayed.</p>
<p>The last word he heard was, <i>Peace</i>!</p>
<p>"That is a good word, and a good thing,"
he said to himself; "and because I am the
Servant of Mary, and the Brother of Jesu the
Son, I will take peace to the <i>Cruitnè</i>, who
know nothing of that blessing of the blessings."</p>
<p>When he unfolded his mantle, he saw that
the coracle was already far from Iona. The
south wind blew, and the tides swept northward,
and the boat moved swiftly across the
water. The sea was ashine with froth and
small waves leaping like lambs.</p>
<p>In the boat were Thorkeld, a helot of
Iona, and two dark wild-eyed men of the
north. They were Picts, but could speak the
tongue of the Gael. Myrdu, the Pictish king
of Skye, had sent them to Iona, to bring
back from Colum a culdee who could show
wonders.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span></p>
<p>"And tell the chief Druid of the Godmen,"
Myrdu had said, "that if his culdee does not
show me good wonders, and so make me
believe in his two gods and the woman, I will
put an ash-shaft through his body from the
hips and out at his mouth, and send him back
on the north tide to the Isle of the White-Robes."
The sun was already among the
outer isles when the coracle passed near the
Isle of Columns. A great noise was in the
air: the noise of the waves in the caverns,
and the noise of the tide, like sea-wolves
growling, and like bulls bellowing in a narrow
pass of the hills.</p>
<p>A sudden current caught the boat, and it
began to drift towards great reefs white with
ceaseless torn streams.</p>
<p>Thorkeld leaned from the helm, and shouted
to the two Picts. They did not stir, but sat
staring, idle with fear.</p>
<p>Artân knew now that it was as Colum had
said. God would give him glory soon.</p>
<p>So he took the little clarsach he had for
hymns, for he was the best harper on Iona,
and struck the strings, and sang. But the
Latin words tangled in his throat, and he
knew too that the men in the boat would not
understand what he sang; also that the older
gods still came far south, and in the caves of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span>
the Isle of Columns were demons. There
was only one tongue common to all; and
since God has wisdom beyond that of Colum
himself, He would know the song in Gaelic
as well as though sung in Latin.</p>
<p>So Artân let the wind take his broken
hymn, and he made a song of his own, and
sang:</p>
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">O Heavenly Mary, Queen of the Elements,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">And you, Brigit the fair with the little harp,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">And all the saints, and all the old gods<br /></span>
<span class="i0">(And it is not one of them I'd be disowning),<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Speak to the Father, that he may save us from drowning.</span>
</div></div>
<p>Then seeing that the boat drifted closer,
he sang again:</p>
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">Save us from the rocks and the sea, Queen of Heaven!<br /></span>
<span class="i0">And remember that I am a Culdee of Iona,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">And that Colum has sent me to the <i>Cruitnè</i><br /></span>
<span class="i0">To sing them the song of peace lest they be damned for ever!</span>
</div></div>
<p>Thorkeld laughed at that.</p>
<p>"Can the woman put swimming upon you?"
he said roughly. "I would rather have the
good fin of a great fish now than any woman
in the skies."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span></p>
<p>"You will burn in hell for that," said Artân,
the holy zeal warm at his heart.</p>
<p>But Thorkeld answered nothing. His hand
was on the helm, his eyes on the foaming
rocks. Besides, what had he to do with the
culdee's hell or heaven? When he died, he,
who was a man of Lochlann, would go to his
own place.</p>
<p>One of the dark men stood, holding the
mast. His eyes shone. Thick words swung
from his lips like <ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both 'sea-weed' and 'seaweed' were used in this text. This was retained.">seaweed</ins> thrown out of a
hollow by an ebbing wave.</p>
<p>The coracle swerved, and the four men were
wet with the heavy spray.</p>
<p>Thorkeld put his oar in the water, and the
swaying craft righted.</p>
<p>"Glory to God," said Artân.</p>
<p>"There is no glory to your god in this,"
said Thorkeld scornfully. "Did you not hear
what Necta sang? He sang to the woman in
there that drags men into the caves, and throws
their bones on the next tide. He put an
incantation upon her, and she shrank, and the
boat slid away from the rocks."</p>
<p>"That is a true thing," thought Artân. He
wondered if it was because he had not sung his
hymn in the holy Latin.</p>
<p>When the last flame died out of the west,
and the stars came like sheep gathering at the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span>
call of the shepherd, Artân remembered that
he had not said his prayers and sang the vesper
hymn.</p>
<p>He lay back and listened. There were no
bells calling across the water. He looked into
the depths. It was Manann's kingdom, and
he had never heard that God was there; but
he looked. Then he stared into the dark-blue
star-strewn sky.</p>
<p>Suddenly he touched Thorkeld.</p>
<p>"Tell me," he said, "how far north has the
Cross of Christ come?"</p>
<p>"By the sea way it has not come here yet.
Murdoch the Freckled came with it this way,
but he was pulled into the sea, and he died."</p>
<p>"Who pulled him into the sea?"</p>
<p>Thorkeld stared into the running wave.
He had no words.</p>
<p>Artân lay still for a long while.</p>
<p>"It will go ill with me," he thought, "if
Mary cannot see me so far away from Iona,
and if God will not listen to me. Colum
should have known that, and given me a holy
leaf with the fair branching letters on it, and
the Latin words that are the words of God."</p>
<p>Then he spoke to the man who had sung.</p>
<p>"Do you know of Mary, and God, and the
Son, and the Spirit?"</p>
<p>"You have too many Gods, Culdee," answered<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span>
the Pict sullenly: "for of these one is
your god's son, and the other is the woman
his mother, and the third is the ghost of an
ancestor."</p>
<p>Artân frowned.</p>
<p>"The curse of the God of Peace upon you
for that," he said angrily; "do you know that
you have hell for your dwelling-place if you
speak evil of God the Father, and the Son, and
the Mother of God?"</p>
<p>"How long have they been in Iona, White-Robe?"</p>
<p>The man spoke scornfully. Artân knew they
had not been there many years. He had no
words.</p>
<p>"My father worshipped the Sun on the Holy
Isle before ever your great Druid that is called
Colum crossed the Moyle. Were your three
gods in the coracle with Colum? They were
not on the Holy Isle when he came."</p>
<p>"They were coming there," answered
Artân confusedly. "It is a long, long way
from—from—from the place they were sailing
from."</p>
<p>Necta listened sullenly.</p>
<p>"Let them stay on Iona," he said: "gods
though they be, it would fare ill with them if
they came upon the Woman with the Net."
Then he turned on his side, and lay by the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span>
man Darach, who was staring at the moon
and muttering words that neither Artân nor
Thorkeld knew.</p>
<p>A white calm fell. The boat lay like a
leaf on a silent pool. There was nothing
between that dim wilderness and the vast
sweeping blackness filled with quivering
stars, but the coracle, that a wave could
crush.</p>
<p><br />At times, I doubt not, there must have been
weaker brethren among these simple and
devoted Culdees of Iona, though in Colum's
own day there was probably none (unless it
were Oran) who was not the visible outward
shrine of a pure flame.</p>
<p>Thinking of such an one, and not without
furtive pagan sympathy, I wrote the other day
these lines, which I may also add here as a
further side-light upon that half-Pagan, half-Christian
basis upon which the Columban
Church of Iona stood.</p>
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">Balva the old monk I am called: when I was young, Balva Honeymouth.<br /></span>
<span class="i0">That was before Colum the White came to Iona in the West.<br /></span>
<span class="i0">She whom I loved was a woman whom I won out of the South.<br /></span>
<span class="i0">And I had a good heaven with my lips on hers and with breast to breast.</span>
</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">Balva the old monk I am called: were it not for the fear<br /></span>
<span class="i0">That the soul of Colum the White would meet my soul in the Narrows<br /></span>
<span class="i0">That sever the living and dead, I would rise up from here,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">And go back to where men pray with spears and arrows.</span>
</div><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">Balva the old monk I am called: ugh! ugh! the cold bell of the matins—'tis dawn!<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Sure it's a dream I have had that I was in a warm wood with the sun ashine,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">And that against me in the pleasant greenness was a soft fawn,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">And a voice that whispered "Balva Honeymouth, drink, I am thy wine!"</span>
</div></div>
<p>As I write,<a name="FNanchor_7_7" id="FNanchor_7_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a> here on the <ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both 'hill-slope' and 'hillslope' were used in this text. This was retained.">hill-slope</ins> of Dûn-I,
the sound of the furtive wave is as the
sighing in a shell. I am alone between sea
and sky, for there is no other on this bouldered
height, nothing visible but a single blue
shadow that slowly sails the hillside. The
bleating of lambs and ewes, the lowing of
kine, these come up from the Machar that
lies between the west slopes and the shoreless
sea to the west; these ascend as the very
smoke of sound. All round the island there
is a continuous breathing; deeper and more<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span>
prolonged on the west, where the open sea is;
but audible everywhere. The seals on Soa are
even now putting their breasts against the
running tide; for I see a flashing of fins here
and there in patches at the north end of the
Sound, and already from the ruddy granite
shores of the Ross there is a congregation of
<ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both 'sea-fowl' and 'seafowl' were used in this text. This was retained.">seafowl</ins>—gannets and guillemots, skuas and
herring-gulls, the long-necked northern diver,
the tern, the cormorant. In the sunblaze, the
waters of the Sound dance their blue bodies
and swirl their flashing white hair o' foam;
and, as I look, they seem to me like children
of the wind and the sunshine, leaping and
running in these flowing pastures, with a
laughter as sweet against the ears as the voices
of children at play.</p>
<p>The joy of life vibrates everywhere. Yet
the Weaver does not sleep, but only dreams.
He loves the sun-drowned shadows. They
are invisible thus, but they are there, in the
sunlight itself. Sure, they may be heard:
as, an hour ago, when on my way hither by
the Stairway of the Kings—for so sometimes
they call here the ancient stones of the
mouldered princes of long ago—I heard a
mother moaning because of the son that had
had to go over-sea and leave her in her old
age; and heard also a child sobbing, because<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span>
of the sorrow of childhood—that sorrow so
unfathomable, so incommunicable. And yet
not a stone's-throw from where I lie, half
hidden beneath an overhanging rock, is the
Pool of Healing. To this small, black-brown
tarn, pilgrims of every generation, for hundreds
of years, have come. Solitary, these; not
only because the pilgrim to the Fount of
Eternal Youth must fare hither alone, and at
dawn, so as to touch the healing water the
moment the first sunray quickens it—but
solitary, also, because those who go in quest
of this Fount of Youth are the dreamers and
the Children of Dream, and these are not
many, and few come now to this lonely place.
Yet, an Isle of Dream Iona is, indeed. Here
the last sun-worshippers bowed before the
Rising of God; here Columba and his hymning
priests laboured and brooded; and here Oran
or his kin dreamed beneath the monkish cowl
that pagan dream of his. Here, too, the eyes
of Fionn and <ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both 'Oìsin' and 'Oisìn' were used in this text. This was retained.">Oisìn</ins>, and of many another
of the heroic men and women of the Fiànna,
may have lingered; here the Pict and the
Celt bowed beneath the yoke of the Norse
pirate, who, too, left his dreams, or rather
his strangely beautiful soul-rainbows, as a
heritage to the stricken; here, for century after
century, the Gael has lived, suffered, joyed,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span>
dreamed his impossible, beautiful dream; as
here, now, he still lives, still suffers patiently,
still dreams, and through all and over all,
broods upon the incalculable mysteries. He
is an elemental, among the elemental forces.
He knows the voices of wind and sea: and it
is because the Fount of Youth upon Dûn-I of
Iona is not the only wellspring of peace, that
the Gael can front destiny as he does, and can
endure. Who knows where its tributaries are?
They may be in your heart, or in mine, and in
a myriad others.</p>
<p>I would that the birds of Angus <ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both Angus 'Og' and 'Òg' were used in this text. This was retained.">Òg</ins> might,
for once, be changed, not, as fabled, into the
kisses of love, but into doves of peace, that
they might fly into the green world, and nest
there in many hearts, in many minds,
crooning their incommunicable song of joy
and hope.</p>
<p><br />A doomed and passing race. I have been
taken to task for these words. But they are
true, in the deep reality where they obtain.
Yes, but true only in one sense, however vital
that is. The Breton's eyes are slowly turning
from the enchanted West, and slowly his ears
are forgetting the whisper of the wind around
menhir and dolmen. The Manxman has
ever been the mere yeoman of the Celtic<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span>
chivalry; but even his rude dialect perishes
year by year. In Wales, a great tradition
survives; in Ireland, a supreme tradition
fades through sunset-hued horizons; in Celtic
Scotland, a passionate regret, a despairing
love and longing, narrows yearly before a
dull and incredibly selfish alienism. The
Celt has at last reached his horizon. There
is no shore beyond. He knows it. This
has been the burden of his song since Malvina
led the blind <ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both 'Oìsin' and 'Oisìn' were used in this text. This was retained.">Oisìn</ins> to his grave by the sea:
"Even the Children of Light must go down
into darkness." But this apparition of a
passing race is no more than the fulfilment of
a glorious resurrection before our very eyes.
For the genius of the Celtic race stands out
now with averted torch, and the light of it is a
glory before the eyes, and the flame of it is
blown into the hearts of the stronger people.
The Celt fades, but his spirit rises in the
heart and the mind of the Anglo-Celtic peoples,
with whom are the destinies of generations to
come.</p>
<p>I stop, and look seaward from this <ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both 'hill-slope' and 'hillslope' were used in this text. This was retained.">hillslope</ins>
of Dûn-I. Yes, even in this Isle of Joy, as
it seems in this dazzle of golden light and
splashing wave, there is the like mortal gloom
and immortal mystery which moved the minds
of the old seers and bards. Yonder, where<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span>
that thin spray quivers against the thyme-set
cliff, is the Spouting Cave, where to this day
the Mar-Tarbh, dread creature of the sea,
swims at the full of the tide. Beyond, out of
sight behind these craggy steeps, is Port-na-Churaich,
where, a thousand years ago,
Columba landed in his coracle. Here, eastward,
is the landing-place, for the dead of old,
brought hence out of Christendom for sacred
burial in the Isle of the Saints. All the story
of the Gael is here. Iona is the microcosm of
the Gaelic world.</p>
<p>Last night, about the hour of the sun's
going, I lay upon the heights near the Cave,
overlooking the Machar—the sandy, rock-frontiered
plain of duneland on the west side
of Iona, exposed to the Atlantic. There was
neither bird nor beast, no living thing to see,
save one solitary human creature. The man
toiled at kelp-burning. I watched the smoke
till it merged into the sea-mist that came
creeping swiftly out of the north, and down
from Dûn-I eastward. At last nothing was
visible. The mist shrouded everything. I
could hear the dull, rhythmic beat of the
waves. That was all. No sound, nothing
visible.</p>
<p>It was, or seemed, a long while before a
rapid thud-thud trampled the heavy air.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span>
Then I heard the rush, the stamping and
neighing, of some young mares, pasturing
there, as they raced to and fro, bewildered or
perchance in play. A glimpse I caught of
three, with flying manes and tails; the others
were blurred shadows only. A swirl, and the
mist disclosed them; a swirl, and the mist
enfolded them again. Then, silence once
more.</p>
<p>Abruptly, though not for a long time thereafter,
the mist rose and drifted seaward.</p>
<p>All was as before. The kelp-burner still
stood, straking the smouldering <ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both 'sea-weed' and 'seaweed' were used in this text. This was retained.">seaweed</ins>.
Above him a column ascended, bluely spiral,
dusked with shadow.</p>
<p><br />The kelp-burner: who was he but the Gael
of the Isles? Who but the Gael in his old-world
sorrow? The mist falls and the mist
rises. He is there all the same, behind it,
part of it; and the column of smoke is the
incense out of his longing heart that desires
Heaven and Earth, and is dowered only with
poverty and pain, hunger and weariness, a
little isle of the seas, a great hope, and the
love of love.</p>
<p><br />But ... to the island-story once more!</p>
<p>Some day, surely, the historian of Iona will
appear.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span></p>
<p>How many "history-books" there are like
dead leaves. The simile is a travesty. There
is no little russet leaf of the forest that could
not carry more real, more intimate knowledge.
There is no leaf that could not reveal mystery
of form, mystery of colour, wonder of
structure, secret of growth, the law of harmony;
that could not testify to birth, and
change, and decay, and death; and what
history tells us more?—that could not, to the
inward ear, bring the sound of the south wind
making a greenness in the woods of Spring,
the west wind calling his brown and red flocks
to the fold.</p>
<p>What a book it will be! It will reveal to us
the secret of what <ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both 'Oìsin' and 'Oisìn' were used in this text. This was retained.">Oisìn</ins> sang, what Merlin
knew, what Columba dreamed, what Adamnan
hoped: what this little "lamp of Christ" was
to pagan Europe; what incense of testimony
it flung upon the winds; what saints and
heroes went out of it; how the dust of kings
and princes were brought there to mingle
with its sands; how the noble and the ignoble
came to it across long seas and perilous
countries. It will tell, too, how the Danes
ravaged the isles of the west, and left not only
their seed for the strengthening of an older
race, but imageries and words, words and
imageries so alive to-day that the listener in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span>
the mind may hear the cries of the viking
above the voice of the Gael and the more
ancient tongue of the Pict. It will tell, too,
how the nettle came to shed her snow above
kings' heads, and the thistle to wave where
bishops' mitres stood; how a simple people
out of the hills and moors, remembering
ancient wisdom or blindly cherishing forgotten
symbols, sought here the fount of youth; and
how, slowly, a long sleep fell upon the island,
and only the grasses shaken in the wind, and
the wind itself, and the broken shadows of
dreams in the minds of the old, held the secret
of Iona. And, at the last—with what lift,
with what joy—it will tell how once more the
doves of hope and peace have passed over its
white sands, this little holy land! This little
holy land! Ah, white doves, come again! A
thousand thousand wait.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span></p>
<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span></p>
<h2>BY <ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both 'sun-down' and 'sundown' were used in this text. This was retained.">SUNDOWN</ins> SHORES</h2>
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">"<i>Cette âme qui se lamente</i><br /></span>
<span class="i0"><i>En cette plaine dormante</i><br /></span>
<span class="i2"><i>C'est la nôtre n'est-ce pas?</i><br /></span>
<span class="i0"><i>La mienne, dis, et la tienne,</i><br /></span>
<span class="i0"><i>Dont s'exhale l'humble antienne</i><br /></span>
<span class="i2"><i>Par ce tiède soir, tout, bas?</i>"</span>
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span></div></div>
<hr style="width: 65%;" />
<h2>By <ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both 'sun-down' and 'sundown' were used in this text. This was retained.">Sundown</ins> Shores</h2>
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">"<i>'N hano ann Tad, ar Mab hac ar Spered-Zantel,</i><br /></span>
<span class="i0"><i>Homan' zo'r ganaouenn zavet en Breiz-Izel!</i><br /></span>
<span class="i0"><i>Zavet gant eur paour-kèz, en Ar-goat, en Ar-vor,</i><br /></span>
<span class="i0"><i>Kanet anez-hi, pewienn, hac ho pezo digor.</i>"</span>
</div><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">"In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit<br /></span>
<span class="i0">This song of mine was raised in my Breton Fatherland,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">In Argoat forest-clad, in Arvor of the grey wave:<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Sing it, wayfarers, and all gates will open before you."</span>
</div></div>
<p>I do not know the name of the obscure
minstrel who sang this song, as he passed from
village to village, by the coasts, along the
heath-lands of Brittany. But there are poets
who have no name and no country, because
they are named by the secret name of the
longing of many minds, and mysteriously
come from and pass to the Land of Heart's
Desire, which is their own land. This wandering
Breton minstrel is of that company.
His sône is familiar. I have heard it where
Connemara breaks in grey rock and sudden
pastures to the sea: where only the wind and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span>
the heather people the solitudes of Argyll:
where the silent Isles shelve to perpetual
foam. He speaks for all his brotherhood of
Armorica: he speaks also for the greater
brotherhood of his race, the broken peoples
who now stand upon the <ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both 'sun-down' and 'sundown' were used in this text. This was retained.">sundown</ins> shores,
from wild Ushant to the cliffs of Achil, from
St. Bride's Bay to solitary St. Kilda. He is
not only the genius of Arvor, daughter of
dreams, but the genius of a race whose
farewell is in a tragic lighting of torches of
beauty around its grave. For it is the soul
of the Celt who wanders homeless to-day,
with his pathetic burthen that his <i>sône</i> was
made by ancestral woods, by the unchanging
sea; dreaming the enchanted air will open
all doors. Alas! few doors open: the wayfarer
must not tarry. Memories and echoes
he may leave, but he must turn his face.
Grey dolmen and grey menhir already stand
there, by the last shores, memorials of his
destiny.</p>
<p>The ancient Gaels believed that in the
western ocean there was an island called Hy
Bràsil, where all that was beautiful and
mysterious lived beyond the pillars of the
rainbow. The legendary romances of the
Celtic races may be described as the Hy Bràsil
of literature.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span></p>
<p>In the Celtic commune there are many
legendary tales which, but for the accident of
names and local circumstances, are identical.
The familiar Highland legend of the children
who, bathing in a mountain loch, were carried
off by a water-horse, has its counterpart in
Connemara, in Merioneth, and in Finistère,
though in the Welsh recital the children are
the victims of a dragon, and in the Breton
legend the monster is a boar. For that matter,
this elemental tale has its roots in the east,
and Macedonia and the Himalaya retain the
memory of what Aryan wagoners told by
the camp-fires during their centuries-long
immigration into Europe. Whether, however,
a tale be universal or strictly Celtic, generally
it has a parallel in one or all of the racial
dialects. True, there are legendary cycles
which are local. The Arzur of Brittany is a
mere echo in the Hebrides, and the name of
Cuculain or the fame of the Red Branch has
not reached the dunes of Armorica. Nevertheless,
even in the <ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both 'mythopoeic' and 'mythopoëic' were used in this text. This was retained.">mythopoeic</ins> tales there is
a kindred character. Nomënoë may have
been a Breton Fionn, though he had no <ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both 'Oìsin' and 'Oisìn' were used in this text. This was retained.">Oìsin</ins>
to wed his deeds to a deathless music; and
Diarmid and Grainne have loved beneath the
oaks of Broceliande or the beech-groves of
Llanidris, as well as among the hills of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span>
Erin, or in the rocky fastnesses of Morven.
It is characteristic, too, how Celtland has
given to Celtland. Scotland gave Ireland St.
Patrick; Ireland gave Scotland St. Columba;
the chief bard of Armorica came from
Wales; and Cornwall has the Arthurian
fame which is the meed of Kymric Caledonia.
To this day no man can say whether Oìsin,
old and blind, wandered at the last to
Drumadoon in Arran, or if indeed he followed
out of Erin the sweet voice from Tirnan-Òg,
and was seen or heard of by none, till
three centuries later the bells of the clerics
and the admonitions of Patrick made his
days a burden not to be borne. Did not the
greatest of Irish kings die in tributary lands
by the banks of the Loire, and who has seen
the moss of that lost grave in Broceliande
where Merlin of the North lay down to a long
sleep?</p>
<p>Even where there seems no probability of
a common origin, there is often a striking
similarity in the matter and the manner of
folk-tales, particularly those which narrate the
strange experiences of the saints. Thus, for
example, in one of the most beautiful of the
legendary stories given in <i>The Shadow of
Arvor</i><a name="FNanchor_8_8" id="FNanchor_8_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a> there is an account of how Gradlon,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span>
"the honoured chief of Kerne, the monarch
who built Ys, and on whose brow were united
the crowns of Armorica," having voluntarily
become a wandering beggar, arrived at last
in the heart of an ancient forest: "towering
moss-clad pillars bearing a heavy roof of
foliage, full of the mystery of a cathedral
aisle by night." Here the king vowed to
build a great temple, but before he could fulfil
his vow he died. Gwennole the monk had
missed Gradlon, and had followed him to the
forest, to find him there on the morrow, lying
on a bed of moss which the fallen leaves had
flecked with gold. Near him crouched a
human figure. This was Primel the anchorite.
Note how the king speaks to the Christian
monk Gwennole concerning this ancient
hermit. "Have mercy on this poor old
man beside me: the length of three men's
lives has been his, and he has known the
deeps of sorrow. The sorrows which have
come upon me are nothing to his; for while
I have wept over the fate of my royal city,
and while for Ahez my heart has been
broken, this man has lost his gods. There
is no sorrow that is so great a sorrow. He
is a Druid lamenting a dead faith. Show him
tenderness." Therewith Gradlon dies. Over
the dead king "Gwennole murmured a Latin<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span>
chant; the druid in a tremulous voice intoned
a refrain in an unknown tongue; and Gradlon,
ruler of the sea, slept in that glade watched
over by the priest of Christ and by the last
surviving servant of Teutates.... There,
amid the majestic solitudes of the forest,
the two religions of the ancient race joined
hands and were at one before the mystery
of death." Later, the druid bids Gwennole
build a Christian sanctuary on the spot
where "the belated ministrant of a fallen
faith" died beside Gradlon Maur, the Great
King. One strange touch of bitterness
occurs. "But," exclaims Gwennole, "if the
sanctuary be reared here, we shall invade thy
last refuge." "As for me ...!" replies the
old man; then, after a silence he adds, with
a gesture of infinite weariness, "it is my
gods who should protect me. Let them save
me if they can." The dying druid turns
away to seek his long rest under the sacred
oaks: "Gwennole, his heart full of a tender
love and pity which he could not understand,
moved slowly towards the sea." A fitting
close to a book full of interest, charm, and
spiritual beauty.</p>
<p>In the third book of St. Adamnan's <i>Life of
St. Columba</i>, there is an episode entitled "Of
a manifestation of angels meeting the soul of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span>
one Emchath." Columba, "making his way
beyond the Ridge of Britain (Drum-Alban),
near the lake of the river Nisa (Loch Ness),
being suddenly inspired by the Holy Spirit,
says to the brethren who are journeying with
him at that time: 'Let us make haste to meet
the holy angels who, that they may carry
away the soul of a certain heathen man, who
is keeping the moral law of nature even to
extreme old age, have been sent out from the
highest regions of heaven, and are waiting
until we come thither, that we may baptize
him in time before he dies.' Thereafter
the aged saint made as much haste as he
could to go in advance of his companions,
until he came to the district which is named
Airchartdan (Glen Urquhart)." There he
found "the holy heathen man," Emchath by
name.</p>
<p>Here, then, is an instance of a Celtic priest
in Armorica and of a Celtic priest in Scotland
acting identically towards an upright heathen.
A large book would be necessary to relate
the correspondence between the folk-tales,
the traditional romances, and the Christian
legends of the four great branches of the Celtic
race.</p>
<p>On the seventh day, when God rested, says a
poet of the Gael, He dreamed of the lands and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span>
nations he had made, and out of that dreaming
were born Ireland and Brittany. Truly,
within Christian days, there were more saints,
there were more lamps of the spirit lit in
that grey peninsula, in that green land, in the
little sand-cinctured isle Iona, than anywhere
betwixt the Syrian deserts and the meads of
Glastonbury. It takes nothing from, it adds
much to these lands where spiritual ecstasy
has longest dreamed, that the old gods have
not perished but merge into the brotherhood
of Christ's company; that the old faiths, and
the ancient spirit, and the pagan soul were
not given to the wave for foam, to the pastures
for idle sand. Ireland and Brittany! Behind
the sorrowful songs of longing and regret,
behind the faint chime of bells which some
day linger as an echo in the towers of Ys
where she lies under the wave, are the cries
of the tympan and the forgotten music of
druidic harps. What song the oaks knew
in Broceliande, what song Taliesin heard,
what chant Merlin the Wild raised among
dim woods in Caledon: these may be lost to
us for ever, or live only through our songs
and dreams as shadows live in the hollows
of the sunrain: but Broceliande and Gethsemane
are in symbol akin, Taliesin is but
another name of him who ate the wild honey<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span>
and listened to the wind, and Merlin, with
the nuts of wisdom in his hand, stands hearkening
to the same deep murmur of the eternal
life which was heard upon the Mount of
Olives.</p>
<p>It has occurred to me often of late, from
what I have seen, and read, and heard from
others, that the Celtic <ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both 'mythopoeic' and 'mythopoëic' were used in this text. This was retained.">mythopoëic</ins> faculty is
still concerning itself largely with an interweaving
of Pagan and Christian thought, of
Pagan and Christian symbol, of the old Pagan
tales of a day and of mortal beauty with the
Christian symbolic legends that are of no day
and are of immortal beauty.</p>
<p>A fisherman told me the story of Diarmid
and Grainne, in the guise of a legend of
the Virgin Mary and her Gaelic husband.
Three years ago, in Appin, an old woman,
Jessie Stewart, told me that when Christ
was crucified He came back to us as <ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both 'Oìsin' and 'Oisìn' were used in this text. This was retained.">Oìsin</ins>
of the Songs. From a ferryman on Loch
Linnhe, near the falls of Lora, a friend heard
a confused story of Oìsin (confused because
the narrator at one moment spoke of Oìsin,
and at another of "Goll"), how on the day
that Christ was crucified Oìsin slew his own
son, and knew madness, crying that he was
but a shadow, and his son a shadow, and that
what he had done was but the shadow of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span>
what was being done in that hour "to the
black sorrow of time and the universe (<i>domhain</i>)."
In this connection, Celtic students
will recall the story of Concobar mac Nessa,
the High King of Ulster: how on that day he
rose suddenly and fled into the woods and
hewed down the branches of trees, crying
that he slew the multitudes of those who at
that moment were doing to death the innocent
son of a king.</p>
<p>Out of this confusion may arise a new interpretation
of certain great symbolic persons
and incidents in the old mythology. As this
legendary lore is being swiftly forgotten, it is
well that it should be saved to new meanings
and new beauty, by that <ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both 'mythopoeic' and 'mythopoëic' were used in this text. This was retained.">mythopoëic</ins> faculty
which, in the Celtic imagination, is as a wing
continually uplifting fallen dreams to the
imaging wind of the Spirit.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span></p>
<hr style="width: 65%;" />
<h2>THE WIND, SILENCE, AND LOVE</h2>
<p>I know one who, asked by a friend desiring
more intimate knowledge as to what influences
above all other influences had shaped her
inward life, answered at once, with that sudden
vision of insight which reveals more than the
vision of thought, "The Wind, Silence, and
Love."</p>
<p>The answer was characteristic, for, with
her who made it, the influences that shape
have always seemed more significant than the
things that are shapen. None can know for
another the mysteries of spiritual companionship.
What is an abstraction to one is a reality
to another: what to one has the proved
familiar face, to another is illusion.</p>
<p>I can well understand the one of whom I
write. With most of us the shaping influences
are the common sweet influences of motherhood
and fatherhood, the airs of home, the
place and manner of childhood. But these
are not for all, and may be adverse, and in
some degree absent. Even when a child
is fortunate in love and home, it may be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span>
spiritually alien from these: it may dimly
discern love rather as a mystery dwelling in
sunlight and moonlight, or in the light that
lies on quiet meadows, woods, quiet shores:
may find a more intimate sound of home in
the wind whispering in the grass, or when a
sighing travels through the wilderness of
leaves, or when an unseen wave moans in the
pine.</p>
<p>When we consider, could any influences
be deeper than these three elemental powers,
for ever young, yet older than age, beautiful
immortalities that whisper continually against
our mortal ear. The Wind, Silence, and
Love: yes, I think of them as good comrades,
nobly ministrant, priests of the hidden way.</p>
<p>To go into solitary places, or among trees
which await dusk and storm, or by a dark
shore; to be a nerve there, to listen to,
inwardly to hear, to be at one with, to be
as grass filled with, as reeds shaken by, as
a wave lifted before, the wind: this is to
know what cannot otherwise be known; to
hear the intimate, dread voice; to listen to
what long, long ago went away, and to what
now is going and coming, coming and going,
and to what august airs of sorrow and
beauty prevail in that dim empire of shadow
where the falling leaf rests unfallen,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span>
where Sound, of all else forgotten and forgetting,
lives in the pale hyacinth, the moon-white
pansy, the cloudy amaranth that gathers
dew.</p>
<p>And, in the wood; by the grey stone on the
hill; where the heron waits; where the plover
wails: on the pillow; in the room filled with
flame-warmed twilight; is there any comrade
that is as Silence is? Can she not whisper
the white secrecies which words discolour?
Can she not say, when we would forget,
forget; when we would remember, remember?
Is it not she also who says, Come unto me
all ye who are weary and heavy laden, and
I will give you rest? Is it not she who has
a lute into which all loveliness of sound has
passed, so that when she breathes upon it life
is audible? Is it not she who will close many
doors, and shut away cries and tumults, and
will lead you to a green garden and a fountain
in it, and say, "This is your heart, and that
is your soul; listen."</p>
<p>That third one, is he a Spirit, alone, uncompanioned?
I think sometimes that these three
are one, and that Silence is his inward voice
and the Wind the sound of his unwearying
feet. Does he not come in wind, whether his
footfall be on the wild rose, or on the bitter
wave, or in the tempest shaken with noises<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span>
and rains that are cries and tears, sighs and
prayers and tears?</p>
<p>He has many ways, many hopes, many
faces. He bends above those who meet in
twilight, above the cradle, above dwellers by
the hearth, above the sorrowful, above the
joyous children of the sun, above the grave.
Must he not be divine, who is worshipped of
all men? Does not the wild-dove take the
rainbow upon its breast because of him, and
the salmon leave the sea for inland pools,
and the creeping thing become winged and
radiant?</p>
<p>The Wind, Silence, and Love: if one cannot
learn of these, is there any comradeship that
can tell us more, that can more comfort us,
that can so inhabit with living light what is
waste and barren?</p>
<p>And, in the hidden hour, one will stoop,
and kiss us on the brow, when our sudden
stillness will, for others, already be memory.
And another will be as an open road, with
morning breaking. And the third will meet
us, with a light of joy in his eyes; but we
shall not see him at first because of the sunblaze,
or hear his words because in that
summer air the birds will be multitude.</p>
<p>Meanwhile they are near and intimate.
Their life uplifts us. We cannot forget<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span>
wholly, nor cease to dream, nor be left unhoping,
nor be without rest, nor go darkly
without torches and songs, if these accompany
us; or we them, for they go one way.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span></p>
<hr style="width: 65%;" />
<h2>BARABAL</h2>
<h3>A MEMORY</h3>
<p>I have spoken in "Iona" and elsewhere of
the old Highland woman who was my nurse.
She was not really old, but to me seemed so,
and I have always so thought of her. She
was one of the most beautiful and benignant
natures I have known.</p>
<p>I owe her a great debt. In a moment,
now, I can see her again, with her pale face
and great dark eyes, stooping over my bed,
singing "Wae's me for Prince Charlie," or
an old Gaelic Lament, or that sad, forgotten,
beautiful and mournful air that was played at
Fotheringay when the Queen of Scots was
done to death, "lest her cries should be
heard." Or, later, I can hear her telling me
old tales before the fire; or, later still, before
the glowing peats in her little island-cottage,
speaking of men and women, and strange
legends, and stranger dreams and visions.
To her, and to an old islander, Seumas
Macleod, of whom I have elsewhere spoken<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span>
in this volume, I owe more than to any
other influences in my childhood. Perhaps
it is from her that in part I have my great
dislike of towns. There is no smoke in
the lark's house, to use one of her frequent
sayings—one common throughout the
west.</p>
<p>I never knew any one whose speech, whose
thought, was so coloured with the old wisdom
and old sayings and old poetry of her race.
To me she stands for the Gaelic woman,
strong, steadfast, true to "her own," her
people, her clan, her love, herself. "When
you come to love," she said to me once, "keep
always to the one you love a mouth of silk and
a heart of hemp."</p>
<p>Her mind was a storehouse of proverbial
lore. Had I been older and wiser, I might
have learned less fugitively. I cannot attempt
to reach adequately even the most characteristic
of these proverbial sayings; it would
take overlong. Most of them, of course,
would be familiar to our proverb-loving
people. But, among others of which I have
kept note, I have not anywhere seen the
following in print. "You could always tell
where his thoughts would be ... pointing
one way like the hounds of Finn" (<i>i.e.</i> the
two stars of the north, the Pointers); "It's<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span>
a comfort to know there's nothing missing,
as the wren said when she counted the
stars"; "The dog's howl is the stag's
laugh"; and again, "I would rather cry with
the plover than laugh with the dog" (both
meaning that the imprisoned comfort of the
towns is not to be compared with the life of
the hills, for all its wildness); "True love is
like a mountain-tarn; it may not be deep, but
that's deep enough that can hold the sun,
moon, and stars"; "It isn't silence where the
lark's song ceases"; "St. Bride's Flower,
St. Bride's Bird, and St. Bride's Gift make a
fine spring and a good year." (<i>Am Beàrnan
Bhrigde, 'us Gille-Bhrigde, 'us Lunn-Bata
Bhrigde, etc.—the dandelion, the oyster-catcher,
and the cradle</i><a name="FNanchor_9_9" id="FNanchor_9_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a>—because the dandelion
comes with the first south winds and in
a sunny spring is seen everywhere, and
because in a fine season the oyster-catcher's
early breeding-note <ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both 'foretell' and 'fortell' were used in this text. This was retained.">fortells</ins> prosperity with
the nets, and because a birth in spring is
good luck for child and mother.) "It's
easier for most folk to say <i>Lus Bealtainn</i>
than <i>La' Bealtainn</i>": i.e. people can see the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span>
small things that concern themselves better
than the great things that concern the world;
literally, "It's easier to say marigold than
may-day"—in Gaelic, a close play upon
words; "<i>Cuir do lamh leinn</i>," "Lend us a
hand," as the fox in the ditch said to the
duckling on the roadside; "<i>Gu'm a slàn gu'n
till thu</i>," "May you return in health," as
the young man said when his conscience
left him; "It's only a hand's-turn from
<i>eunadair</i> to <i>eunadan</i>" (from the bird-snarer
to the cage); "Saying <i>eud</i> is next door to
saying <i>eudail</i>," as the girl laughed back to
her sweetheart (<i>eud</i> is jealousy and <i>eudail</i>
my Treasure); "The lark doesn't need
<i>broggan</i> (shoes) to climb the stairs of the
sky."</p>
<p>Among those which will not be new to
some readers, I have note of a rhyme about
the stars of the four seasons, and a saying
about the three kinds of love, and the four
stars of destiny. Wind comes from the
spring star, runs the first; heat from the
summer star, water from the autumn star,
and frost from the winter star. Barabal's
variant was "wind (air) from the spring star
in the east; fire (heat) from the summer star
in the south; water from the autumn star in
the west; wisdom, silence and death from the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span>
star in the north." Both this season-rhyme
and that of the three kinds of love are well
known. The latter runs:—</p>
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<i><span class="i0">Gaol nam fear-dìolain, mar shruth-lìonaidh na mara;<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Gaol nam fear-fuadain, mar ghaoith tuath 'thig o'n charraig;<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Gaol nam fear-posda, mar luing a' seòladh gu cala.</span></i>
</div><div class="stanza">
<i><span class="i0">Lawless love is as the wild tides of the sea;<br /></span>
<span class="i0">And the roamer's love cruel as the north wind blowing from barren rocks;<br /></span>
<span class="i0">But wedded love is like the ship coming safe home to haven.</span>
</i></div></div>
<p>I have found these two and many others
of Barabal's sayings and rhymes, except those
I have first given, in collections of proverbs
and folklore, but do not remember having
noted another, though doubtless "The
Four Stars of Destiny (or Fate)" will be
recalled by some. It ran somewhat as follows:—</p>
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0"><i>Reul Near</i> (Star of the East), Give us kindly birth;<br /></span>
<span class="i0"><i>Reul Deas</i> (Star of the South), Give us great love;<br /></span>
<span class="i0"><i>Reul Niar</i> (Star of the West), Give us quiet age;<br /></span>
<span class="i0"><i>Reul Tuath</i> (Star of the North), Give us Death.</span>
</div></div>
<p>It was from her I first heard of the
familiar legend of the waiting of Fionn and
the <ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both 'Fèinn' and 'Féinn' were used in this text. This was retained.">Fèinn</ins> (popularly now Fingal and the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span>
Fingalians), "fo-gheasaibh," spellbound, till
the day of their return to the living world. In
effect the several legends are the same. That
which Barabal told was as an isleswoman
would more naturally tell it. A man so pure
that he could give a woman love and yet let
angels fan the flame in his heart, and so
innocent that his thoughts were white as a
child's thoughts, and so brave that none could
withstand him, climbed once to the highest
mountain in the Isles, where there is a great
cave that no one has ever entered. A huge
white hound slept at the entrance to the
cave. He stepped over it, and it did not
wake. He entered, and passed four tall
demons, with bowed heads and folded arms,
one with great wings of red, another with
wings of white, another with wings of
green, and another with wings of black.
They did not uplift their dreadful eyes.
Then he saw Fionn and the Fèinn sitting in
a circle.</p>
<p>Their long hair trailed on the ground;
their eyebrows fell to their beards; their
beards lay upon their feet, so that nothing of
their bodies was seen but hands like scarped
rocks that clasped gigantic swords. Behind
them hung an elk-horn with a mouth of gold.
He blew this horn, but nothing happened,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span>
except that the huge white hound came in,
and went to the hollow place round which
the <ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both 'Fèinn' and 'Féinn' were used in this text. This was retained.">Fèinn</ins> sat, and in silence ate greedily of
treasures of precious stones. He blew the
horn again, and Fionn and all the Fèinn
opened their great, cold, grey, lifeless eyes,
and stared upon him; and for him it was as
though he stood at a grave and the dead
man in the grave put up strong hands and
held his feet, and as though his soul saw
Fear.</p>
<p>But with a mighty effort he blew the horn
a third time. The <ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both 'Fèinn' and 'Féinn' were used in this text. This was retained.">Fèinn</ins> leaned on their
elbows, and Fionn said, "Is the end come?"
But the man could wait no more, and turned
and fled, leaving that ancient mighty company
leaning upon its elbow, spellbound
thus, waiting for the end. So they shall be
found. The four demons fled into the air,
and tumultuous winds swung him from that
place. He heard the baying of the white
hound, and the mountain vanished. He was
found lying dead in a pasture in the little
island that was his home. I recall this here
because the legend was plainly in Barabal's
mind when her last ill came upon her. In
her delirium she cried suddenly, "The Fèinn!
The Fèinn! they are coming down the
hill!"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span></p>
<p>"I hear the bells of the ewes," she said
abruptly, just before the end: so by that we
knew she was already upon far pastures, and
heard the Shepherd calling upon the sheep to
come into the fold.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span></p>
<hr style="width: 65%;" />
<h2>THE WHITE HERON</h2>
<p>It was in summer, when there is no night
among these Northern Isles. The slow, hot
days waned through a long after-glow of rose
and violet; and when the stars came, it was
only to reveal purple depths within depths.</p>
<p>Mary Macleod walked, barefoot, through
the dewy grass, on the long western slope of
Innisròn, looking idly at the phantom flake
of the moon as it hung like a blown moth
above the rose-flush of the West. Below it,
beyond her, the ocean. It was pale, opalescent;
here shimmering with the hues of the
moonbow; here dusked with violet shadow,
but, for the most part, pale, opalescent. No
wind moved, but a breath arose from the
momentary lips of the sea. The cool sigh
floated inland, and made a continual faint
tremor amid the salt grasses. The skuas
and guillemots stirred, and at long intervals
screamed.</p>
<p>The girl stopped, staring seaward. The
illimitable, pale, unlifted wave; the hinted
dusk of the quiet underwaters; the unfathomable<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span>
violet gulfs overhead;—these silent
comrades were not alien to her. Their kin,
she was but a moving shadow on an isle; to
her, they were the veils of wonder beyond
which the soul knows no death, but looks
upon the face of Beauty, and upon the eyes
of Love, and upon the heart of Peace.</p>
<p>Amid these silent spaces two dark objects
caught the girl's gaze. Flying eastward, a
solander trailed a dusky wing across the sky.
So high its flight that the first glance saw it
as though motionless; yet, even while Mary
looked, the skyfarer waned suddenly, and that
which had been was not. The other object
had wings too, but was not a bird. A fishing-smack
lay idly becalmed, her red-brown sail
now a patch of warm dusk. Mary knew
what boat it was—the <i>Nighean Donn</i>, out of
Fionnaphort in Ithona, the westernmost of
the Iarraidh Isles.</p>
<p>There was no one visible on board the
<i>Nighean Donn</i>, but a boy's voice sang a
monotonous Gaelic cadence, indescribably
sweet as it came, remote and wild as an air
out of a dim forgotten world, across the still
waters. Mary Macleod knew the song, a
strange <i>iorram</i> or boat-song made by Pòl the
Freckled, and by him given to his friend Angus
Macleod of Ithona. She muttered the words<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span>
over and over, as the lilt of the boyish voice
rose and fell—</p>
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">It is not only when the sea is dark and chill and desolate<br /></span>
<span class="i2">I hear the singing of the queen who lives beneath the ocean:<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Oft have I heard her chanting voice when moon o'erfloods his golden gate,<br /></span>
<span class="i2">Or when the moonshine fills the wave with snow-white mazy motion.</span>
</div><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">And some day will it hap to me, when the black waves are leaping,<br /></span>
<span class="i2">Or when within the breathless green I see her shell-strewn door,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">That singing voice will lure me where my sea-drown'd love lies sleeping<br /></span>
<span class="i2">Beneath the slow white hands of her who rules the sunken shore.</span>
</div><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">For in my heart I hear the bells that ring their fatal beauty.<br /></span>
<span class="i2">The wild, remote, uncertain bells that chant their lonely sorrow:<br /></span>
<span class="i0">The lonely bells of sorrow, the bells of fatal beauty,<br /></span>
<span class="i2">Oft in my heart I hear the bells, who soon shall know no morrow.</span>
</div></div>
<p>The slow splashing of oars in the great
hollow cavern underneath her feet sent a
flush to her face. She knew who was there—that
it was the little boat of the <i>Nighean
Donn</i>, and that Angus Macleod was in it.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span></p>
<p>She stood among the seeding grasses, intent.
The cluster of white moon-daisies that reached
to her knees was not more pale than her white
face; for a white silence was upon Mary
Macleod in her dreaming girlhood, as in her
later years.</p>
<p>She shivered once as she listened to Angus's
echoing song, while he secured his boat, and
began to climb from ledge to ledge. He too
had heard the lad Uille Ban singing as he lay
upon a coil of rope, while the smack lay idly
on the unmoving waters; and hearing, had
himself taken up the song—</p>
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<i><span class="i0">For in my heart I hear the bells that ring their fatal beauty,<br /></span>
<span class="i2">The wild, remote, uncertain bells that chant their lonely sorrow:<br /></span>
<span class="i0">The lonely bells of sorrow, the bells of fatal beauty,<br /></span>
<span class="i2">Oft in my heart I hear the bells, who soon shall know no morrow.</span></i>
</div></div>
<p>Mary shivered with the vague fear that
had come upon her. Had she not dreamed,
in the bygone night, that she heard some one
in the sea singing that very song—some one
with slow, white hands which waved idly
above a dead man? A moment ago she had
listened to the same song sung by the lad
Uille Ban; and now, for the third time, she<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span>
heard Angus idly chanting it as he rose
invisibly from ledge to ledge of the great
cavern below. Three idle songs yet she
remembered that death was but the broken
refrain of an idle song.</p>
<p>When Angus leaped onto the slope and
came towards her, she felt her pulse quicken.
Tall and fair, he looked fairer and taller than
she had ever seen him. The light that was
still in the west lingered in his hair, which,
yellow as it was, now glistened as with the
sheen of bronze. He had left his cap in the
boat; and as he crossed swiftly towards her,
she realized anew that he deserved the Gaelic
name given him by Pòl the poet—Angus the
yellow-haired son of Youth. They had never
spoken of their love, and now both realized in
a flash that no words were needed. At midsummer
noon no one says the sun shines.</p>
<p>Angus came forward with outreaching
hands. "Dear, dear love!" he whispered.
"Mhairi mo rùn, muirnean, mochree!"</p>
<p>She put her hands in his; she put her lips
to his; she put her head to his breast, and
listened, all her life throbbing in response to
the leaping pulse of the heart that loved
her.</p>
<p>"Dear, dear love!" he whispered again.</p>
<p>"Angus!" she murmured.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span></p>
<p>They said no more, but moved slowly
onward, hand in hand.</p>
<p>The night had their secret. For sure, it
was in the low sighing of the deep when the
tide put its whispering lips against the sleeping
sea; it was in the spellbound silences of the
isle; it was in the phantasmal light of the
stars—the stars of dream, in a sky of dream,
in a world of dream. When, an hour—or
was it an eternity, or a minute?—later, they
turned, she to her home near the clachan of
Innisròn, he to his boat, a light air had come
up on the forehead of the tide. The sail of
the <i>Nighean Donn</i> flapped, a dusky wing in
the darkness. The penetrating smell of sea-mist
was in the air.</p>
<p>Mary had only one regret as she turned her
face inland, when once the invisibly gathering
mist hid from her even the blurred semblance
of the smack—that she had not asked Angus
to sing no more that song of Pòl the Freckled,
which vaguely she feared, and even hated.
She had stood listening to the splashing of the
oars, and, later, to the voices of Angus and
Uille Ban; and now, coming faintly and to her
weirdly through the gloom, she heard her
lover's voice chanting the words again. What
made him sing that song, in that hour, on this
day of all days?<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span></p>
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">For in my heart I hear the bells that ring their fatal beauty,<br /></span>
<span class="i2">The wild, remote, uncertain bells that chant their lonely sorrow:<br /></span>
<span class="i0">The lonely bells of sorrow, the bells of fatal beauty,<br /></span>
<span class="i2">Oft in my heart I hear the bells, who soon shall know no morrow.</span>
</div></div>
<p>But long before she was back at the peat-fire
again she forgot that sad, haunting cadence,
and remembered only his words—the dear
words of him whom she loved, as he came
towards her, across the dewy grass, with outstretched
hands—</p>
<p>"Dear, dear love!—Mhairi mo rùn, muirnean,
mochree!"</p>
<p>She saw them in the leaping shadows in
the little room; in the red glow that flickered
along the fringes of the peats; in the darkness
which, like a sea, drowned the lonely croft.
She heard them in the bubble of the meal,
as slowly with wooden spurtle she stirred the
porridge; she heard them in the rising wind
that had come in with the tide; she heard
them in the long resurge and multitudinous
shingly inrush as the hands of the Atlantic
tore at the beaches of Innisròn.</p>
<p>After the smooring of the peats, and when
the two old people, the father of her father
and his white-haired wife, were asleep, she<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span>
sat for a long time in the warm darkness.
From a cranny in the peat ash a smouldering
flame looked out comfortingly. In the girl's
heart a great peace was come as well as a
great joy. She had dwelled so long with
silence that she knew its eloquent secrets;
and it was sweet to sit there in the dusk, and
listen, and commune with silence, and dream.</p>
<p>Above the long, deliberate rush of the tidal
waters round the piled beaches she could
hear a dull, rhythmic beat. It was the screw
of some great steamer, churning its way
through the darkness; a stranger, surely, for
she knew the times and seasons of every
vessel that came near these lonely isles.
Sometimes it happened that the Uist or
Tiree steamers passed that way; doubtless
it was the Tiree boat, or possibly the big
steamer that once or twice in the summer
fared northward to far-off St. Kilda.</p>
<p>She must have slept, and the sound have
passed into her ears as an echo into a shell;
for when, with a start, she arose, she still
heard the thud-thud of the screw, although
the boat had long since passed away.</p>
<p>It was the cry of a sea-bird which had
startled her. Once—twice—the scream had
whirled about the house. Mary listened, intent.
Once more it came, and at the same moment<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span>
she saw a drift of white press up against the
window.</p>
<p>She sprang to her feet, startled.</p>
<p>"It is the cry of a heron," she muttered,
with dry lips; "but who has heard tell of a
white heron?—and the bird there is white as
a snow-wreath."</p>
<p>Some uncontrollable impulse made her
hesitate. She moved to go to the window, to
see if the bird were wounded, but she could
not. Sobbing with inexplicable fear, she
turned and fled, and a moment later was in
her own little room. There all her fear
passed. Yet she could not sleep for long.
If only she could get the sound of that beating
screw out of her ears, she thought. But she
could not, neither waking nor sleeping; nor
the following day; nor any day thereafter; and
when she died, doubtless she heard the thud-thud
of a screw as it churned the dark waters
in a night of shrouding mist.</p>
<p>For on the morrow she learned that the
<i>Nighean Donn</i> had been run down in the mist,
a mile south of Ithona, by an unknown
steamer. The great vessel came out of the
darkness, unheeding; unheeding she passed
into the darkness again. Perhaps the officer
in command thought that his vessel had run
into some floating wreckage; for there was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span>
no cry heard, and no lights had been seen.
Later, only one body was found—that of the
boy Uille Ban.</p>
<p>When heartbreaking sorrow comes, there
is no room for words. Mary Macleod said
little; what, indeed, was there to say? The
islanders gave what kindly comfort they
could. The old minister, when next he came
to Innisròn, spoke of the will of God and the
Life Eternal.</p>
<p>Mary bowed her head. What had been, was
not: could any words, could any solace, better
that?</p>
<p>"You are young, Mary," said Mr. Macdonald,
when he had prayed with her. "God will not
leave you desolate."</p>
<p>She turned upon him her white face, with her
great, brooding, dusky eyes:</p>
<p>"Will He give me back Angus?" she said,
in her low, still voice, that had the hush in it of
lonely places.</p>
<p>He could not tell her so.</p>
<p>"It was to be," she said, breaking the long
silence that had fallen between them.</p>
<p>"Ay," the minister answered.</p>
<p>She looked at him, and then took his
hand. "I am thanking you, Mr. Macdonald,
for the good words you have put upon my
sorrow. But I am not wishing that any more<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span>
be said to me. I must go now, for I have
to see to the milking, an' I hear the poor
beasts lowing on the hillside. The old folk
too are weary, and I must be getting them their
porridge."</p>
<p>After that no one ever heard Mary Macleod
speak of Angus. She was a good lass, all
agreed, and made no moan; and there was
no croft tidier than Scaur-a-van, and because
of her it was; and she made butter better
than any on Innisròn; and in the isles
there was no cheese like the Scaur-a-van
cheese.</p>
<p>Had there been any kith or kin of Angus,
she would have made them hers. She took
the consumptive mother of Uille Ban from
Ithona, and kept her safe-havened at Scaur-a-van,
till the woman sat up one night in her
bed, and cried in a loud voice that Uille Ban
was standing by her side and playing a wild
air on the strings of her heart, which he had
in his hands, and the strings were breaking,
she cried. They broke, and Mary envied her,
and the whispering joy she would be having
with Uille Ban. But Angus had no near kin.
Perhaps, she thought, he would miss her the
more where he had gone. He had a friend,
whom she had never seen. He was a man of
Iona, and was named <ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both 'Eachain' and 'Eachainn' MacEachainn were used in this text. This was retained.">Eachain</ins> MacEachain<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span>
Maclean. He and Angus had been boys in
the same boat, and sailed thrice to Iceland
together, and once to Peterhead, that maybe
was as far or further, or perhaps upon the
coast-lands further east. Mary knew little
geography, though she could steer by the
stars. To this friend she wrote, through the
minister, to say that if ever he was in trouble
he was to come to her.</p>
<p>It was on the third night after the sinking of
the <i>Nighean Donn</i> that Mary walked alone,
beyond the shingle beaches, and where the
ledges of trap run darkly into deep water. It
was a still night and clear. The lambs and
ewes were restless in the moonshine; their
bleating filled the upper solitudes. A shoal
of mackerel made a spluttering splashing sound
beyond the skerries outside the haven. The
ebb, sucking at the weedy extremes of the
ledges, caused a continuous bubbling sound.
There was no stir of air, only a breath upon
the sea; but, immeasurably remote, frayed
clouds, like trailed nets in yellow gulfs of
moonlight, shot flame-shaped tongues into the
dark, and seemed to lick the stars as these
shook in the wind. "No mist to-night," Mary
muttered; then, startled by her own words,
repeated, and again repeated, "There will be
no mist to-night."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span></p>
<p>Then she stood as though become stone.
Before her, on a solitary rock, a great
bird sat. It was a heron. In the moonshine
its plumage glistened white as foam
of the sea; white as one of her lambs it
was.</p>
<p>She had never seen, never heard of, a white
heron. There was some old Gaelic song—what
was it?—no, she could not remember—something
about the souls of the dead. The
words would not come.</p>
<p>Slowly she advanced. The heron did not
stir. Suddenly she fell upon her knees, and
reached out her arms, and her hair fell about
her shoulders, and her heart beat against her
throat, and the grave gave up its sorrow, and
she cried—</p>
<p>"Oh, Angus, Angus, my beloved! Angus,
Angus, my dear, dear love!"</p>
<p>She heard nothing, saw nothing, felt nothing,
knew nothing, till, numbed and weak, she
stirred with a cry, for some creeping thing
of the sea had crossed her hand. She rose
and stared about her. There was nothing to
give her fear. The moon rays danced on a
glimmering sea-pasture far out upon the
water; their lances and javelins flashed and
glinted merrily. A dog barked as she crossed
the flag-stones at Scaur-a-van, then suddenly<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span>
began a strange furtive baying. She called,
"Luath! Luath!"</p>
<p>The dog was silent a moment, then threw its
head back and howled, abruptly breaking again
into a sustained baying. The echo swept from
croft to croft, and wakened every dog upon
the isle.</p>
<p>Mary looked back. Slowly circling behind
her she saw the white heron. With a cry, she
fled into the house.</p>
<p>For three nights thereafter she saw the
white heron. On the third she had no fear.
She followed the foam-white bird; and when
she could not see it, then she followed its wild,
plaintive cry. At dawn she was still at
Ardfeulan, on the western side of Innisròn;
but her arms were round the drowned heart
whose pulse she had heard leap so swift in joy,
and her lips put a vain warmth against the dear
face that was wan as spent foam, and as chill
as that.</p>
<p>Three years after that day Mary saw again
the white heron. She was alone now, and she
was glad, for she thought Angus had come, and
she was ready.</p>
<p>Yet neither death nor sorrow happened.
Thrice, night after night, she saw the white
gleam of nocturnal wings, heard the strange
bewildering cry.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span></p>
<p>It was on the fourth day, when a fierce
gale covered the isle with a mist of driving
spray. No Innisròn boat was outside the
haven; for that, all were glad. But in the
late afternoon a cry went from mouth to
mouth.</p>
<p>There was a fishing-coble on the skerries!
That meant death for all on board, for
nothing could be done. The moment came
soon. A vast drowning billow leaped forward,
and when the cloud of spray had scattered,
there was no coble to be seen. Only one
man was washed ashore, nigh dead, upon
the spar he clung to. His name was
<ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both 'Eachain' and 'Eachainn' MacEachainn were used in this text. This was retained.">Eachain</ins> MacEachain, son of a Maclean of
Iona.</p>
<p>And that was how Mary Macleod met the
friend of Angus, and he a ruined man, and
how she put her life to his, and they were
made one.</p>
<p>Her man ... yes, he was her man, to whom
she was loyal and true, and whom she loved
right well for many years. But she knew, and
he too knew well, that she had wedded one
man in her heart, and that no other could
take his place there, then or for ever. She
had one husband only, but it was not he to
whom she was wed, but Angus, the son of
Alasdair—him whom she loved with the deep<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span>
love that surpasseth all wisdom of the world
that ever was, or is, or shall be.</p>
<p>And <ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both 'Eachain' and 'Eachainn' MacEachainn were used in this text. This was retained.">Eachain</ins> her man lived out his years
with her, and was content, though he knew
that in her silent heart his wife, who loved
him well, had only one lover, one dream, one
hope, one passion, one remembrance, one
husband.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span></p>
<hr style="width: 65%;" />
<h2>THE SMOOTHING OF THE HAND</h2>
<p>Glad am I that wherever and whenever I
listen intently I can hear the looms of Nature
weaving Beauty and Music. But some of the
most beautiful things are learned otherwise—by
hazard, in the Way of Pain, or at the Gate
of Sorrow.</p>
<p>I learned two things on the day when I
saw Seumas McIan dead upon the heather.
He of whom I speak was the son of Ian
McIan Alltnalee, but was known throughout
the home straths and the countries beyond
as Seumas Dhu, Black James, or, to render
the subtler meaning implied in this instance,
James the Dark One. I had wondered occasionally
at the designation, because Seumas,
if not exactly fair, was not dark. But
the name was given to him, as I learned
later, because, as commonly rumoured, he
knew that which he should not have
known.</p>
<p>I had been spending some weeks with
Alasdair McIan and his wife Silis (who was my
foster-sister), at their farm of Ardoch, high<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span>
in a remote hill country. One night we were
sitting before the peats, listening to the wind
crying amid the corries, though, ominously as
it seemed to us, there was not a breath in the
rowan-tree that grew in the sun's way by the
house. Silis had been singing, but silence had
come upon us. In the warm glow from the
fire we saw each other's faces. There the
silence lay, strangely still and beautiful, as
snow in moonlight. Silis's song was one of
the <i>Dana Spioradail</i>, known in Gaelic as the
Hymn of the Looms. I cannot recall it, nor
have I ever heard or in any way encountered it
again.</p>
<p>It had a lovely refrain, I know not whether
its own or added by Silis. I have heard
her chant it to other runes and songs.
Now, when too late, my regret is deep that
I did not take from her lips more of those
sorrowful, strange songs or chants, with
their ancient Celtic melodies, so full of
haunting sweet melancholy, which she loved
so well. It was with this refrain that, after
a long stillness, she startled us that October
night. I remember the sudden light in
the eyes of Alasdair McIan, and the beat
at my heart, when, like rain in a wood,
her voice fell unawares upon us out of the
silence:<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span></p>
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0"><i>Oh! oh! ohrone, arone! Oh! oh! mo <ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both mo 'ghraidh' and 'ghràidh' were used in this text. This was retained.">ghraidh</ins>, mo chridhe!</i><br /></span>
<span class="i0"><i>Oh! oh! mo ghraidh, mo chridhe!</i><a name="FNanchor_10_10" id="FNanchor_10_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a></span>
</div></div>
<p>The wail, and the sudden break in the
second line, had always upon me an effect of
inexpressible pathos. Often that sad wind-song
has been in my ears, when I have been
thinking of many things that are passed and
are passing.</p>
<p>I know not what made Silis so abruptly
begin to sing, and with that wailing couplet
only, or why she lapsed at once into silence
again. Indeed, my remembrance of the incident
at all is due to the circumstance that
shortly after Silis had turned her face to the
peats again, a knock came to the door, and
then Seumas Dhu entered.</p>
<p>"Why do you sing that lament, Silis, sister
of my father?" he asked, after he had seated
himself beside me, and spread his thin hands
against the peat glow, so that the flame
seemed to enter within the flesh.</p>
<p>Silis turned to her nephew, and looked at
him, as I thought, questioningly. But she did
not speak. He, too, said nothing more, either
forgetful of his question, or content with what<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span>
he had learned or failed to learn through her
silence.</p>
<p>The wind had come down from the corries
before Seumas rose to go. He said he was
not returning to Alltnalee, but was going upon
the hill, for a big herd of deer had come
over the ridge of Mel Mòr. Seumas, though
skilled in all hill and forest craft, was not a
sure shot, as was his kinsman and my host,
Alasdair McIan.</p>
<p>"You will need help," I remember Alasdair
Ardoch saying mockingly, adding, "<i>Co dhiubh
is fhearr let mise thoir sealladh na fàileadh
dhiubh?</i>"—that is to say, Whether would
you rather me to deprive them of sight or
smell?</p>
<p>This is a familiar saying among the old
sportsmen in my country, where it is believed
that a few favoured individuals have the
power to deprive deer of either sight or smell,
as the occasion suggests.</p>
<p>"<i>Dhuit ciàr nan carn!</i>—The gloom of the
rocks be upon you!" replied Seumas, sullenly:
"mayhap the hour is come when the red stag
will sniff at my nostrils."</p>
<p>With that dark saying he went. None of us
saw him again alive.</p>
<p>Was it a forewarning? I have often
wondered. Or had he sight of the shadow?<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span></p>
<p>It was three days after this, and shortly
after sunrise, that, on crossing the south slope
of Mel Mòr with Alasdair Ardoch, we came
suddenly upon the body of Seumas, half submerged
in a purple billow of heather. It did
not, at the moment, occur to me that he was
dead. I had not known that his prolonged
absence had been noted, or that he had been
searched for. As a matter of fact, he must
have died immediately before our approach,
for his limbs were still loose, and he lay as a
sleeper lies.</p>
<p>Alasdair kneeled and raised his kinsman's
head. When it lay upon the purple tussock,
the warmth and glow from the sunlit ling
gave a fugitive deceptive light to the pale
face. I know not whether the sun can have
any chemic action upon the dead. But it
seemed to me that a dream rose to the face of
Seumas, like one of those submarine flowers
that are said to rise at times and be visible
for a moment in the hollow of a wave. The
dream, the light, waned; and there was a
great stillness and white peace where the
trouble had been. "It is the Smoothing of the
Hand," said Alasdair McIan, in a hushed
voice.</p>
<p>Often I had heard this lovely phrase in
the Western Isles, but always as applied to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span>
sleep. When a fretful child suddenly falls
into quietude and deep slumber, an isleswoman
will say that it is because of the
Smoothing of the Hand. It is always a profound
sleep, and there are some who hold it
almost as a sacred thing, and never to be disturbed.</p>
<p>So, thinking only of this, I whispered to
my friend to come away; that Seumas was
dead weary with hunting upon the hills; that
he would awake in due time.</p>
<p>McIan looked at me, hesitated, and said
nothing. I saw him glance around. A few
yards away, beside a great boulder in the
heather, a small rowan stood, flickering its
feather-like shadows across the white wool of
a ewe resting underneath. He moved thitherward,
slowly, plucked a branch heavy with
scarlet berries, and then, having returned, laid
it across the breast of his kinsman.</p>
<p>I knew now what was that passing of the
trouble in the face of Seumas Dhu, what
that sudden light was, that calming of the sea,
that ineffable quietude. It was the Smoothing
of the Hand.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span></p>
<hr style="width: 65%;" />
<h2>THE WHITE FEVER</h2>
<p>One night, before the peats, I was told this
thing by old Cairstine Macdonald, in the isle
of Benbecula. It is in her words that I give it:</p>
<p><br />In the spring of the year that my boy Tormaid
died, the moon-daisies were as thick as
a woven shroud over the place where Giorsal,
the daughter of Ian, the son of Ian MacLeod
of Baille 'n Bad-a-sgailich, slept night and
day.<a name="FNanchor_11_11" id="FNanchor_11_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_11_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a></p>
<p>All that March the cormorants screamed,
famished. There were few fish in the sea,
and no kelp-weed was washed up by the high
tides. In the island and in the near isles,
ay, and far north through the mainland, the
blight lay. Many sickened. I knew young
mothers who had no milk. There are green<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span>
mounds in Carnan kirkyard that will be telling
you of what this meant. Here and there
are little green mounds, each so small that
you might cuddle it in your arm under your
plaid.</p>
<p>Tormaid sickened. A bad day was that
for him when he came home, weary with the
sea, and drenched to the skin, because of a
gale that caught him and his mates off Barra
Head. When the March winds tore down
the Minch, and leaped out from over the
Cuchullins, and came west, and lay against
our homes, where the peats were sodden
and there was little food, the minister told
me that my lad would be in the quiet havens
before long. This was because of the white
fever. It was of that same that Giorsal
waned, and went out like a thin flame in
sunlight.</p>
<p>The son of my man (years ago weary no
more) said little ever. He ate nothing almost,
even of the next to nothing we had. At
nights he couldna sleep because of his cough.
The coming of May lifted him awhile. I
hoped he would see the autumn; and that if
he did, and the herring came, and the harvest
was had, and what wi' this and what wi'
that, he would forget his Giorsal that lay i'
the mools in the quiet place yonder. Maybe<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span>
then, I thought, the sorrow would go, and
take its shadow with it.</p>
<p>One gloaming he came in with all the whiteness
of his wasted body in his face. His
heart was out of its shell; and mine, too, at
the sight of him.<a name="FNanchor_12_12" id="FNanchor_12_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_12_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a></p>
<p>This was the season of the hanging of the
dog's mouth.</p>
<p>"What is it, Tormaid-a-ghaolach?" I
asked, with the sob that was in my throat.</p>
<p>"<i>Thraisg mo chridhe</i>," he muttered (My
heart is parched). Then, feeling the asking
in my eyes, he said, "I have seen her."</p>
<p>I knew he meant Giorsal. My heart sank.
But I wore my nails into the palms of my
hands. Then I said this thing, that is an old
saying in the isles: "Those who are in the
quiet havens hear neither the wind nor the
sea." He was so weak he could not lie down
in the bed. He was in the big chair before
the peats, with his feet on a <i>claar</i>.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span></p>
<p>When the wind was still I read him the
Word. A little warm milk was all he would
take. I could hear the blood in his lungs
sobbing like the ebb-tide in the <ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both 'sea-weed' and 'seaweed' were used in this text. This was retained.">sea-weed</ins>. This
was the thing that he said to me:</p>
<p>"She came to me, like a grey mist, beyond
the dyke of the green place, near the road.
The face of her was grey as a grey dawn, but
the voice was hers, though I heard it under a
wave, so dull and far was it. And these are
her words to me, and mine to her—and the
first speaking was mine, for the silence wore
me:</p>
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">Am bheil thu' falbh,<br /></span>
<span class="i2">O mo <ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both mo 'ghraidh' and 'ghràidh' were used in this text. This was retained.">ghraidh</ins>?<br /></span>
<i><span class="i4">B'idh mi falbh,<br /></span>
<span class="i6">Mùirnean!</span></i>
</div><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">C'uin a thilleas tu,<br /></span>
<span class="i2">O mo ghraidh?</span>
</div><div class="stanza">
<i><span class="i2">Cha till mi an rathad so;<br /></span>
<span class="i2">Tha an't ait e cumhann—<br /></span>
<span class="i4">O Mùirnean, Mùirnean!<br /></span>
<span class="i2">B'idh mi falbh an drùgh<br /></span>
<span class="i2">Am tigh Pharais,<br /></span>
<span class="i6">Mùirnean!</span></i>
</div><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">Sèol dhomh an rathad,<br /></span>
<span class="i2">Mo ghraidh!<br /></span>
<i><span class="i4">Thig an so, Mùirnean-mo,<br /></span>
<span class="i6">Thig an so!</span></i><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span>
</div><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">Are you going,<br /></span>
<span class="i2">My dear one?<br /></span>
<i><span class="i4">Yea, now I am going,<br /></span>
<span class="i6">Dearest.</span></i>
</div><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">When will you come again,<br /></span>
<span class="i2">My dear one?</span>
</div><div class="stanza">
<i><span class="i2">I will not return this way;<br /></span>
<span class="i2">The place is narrow—<br /></span>
<span class="i4">O my Darling!<br /></span>
<span class="i2">I will be going to Paradise,<br /></span>
<span class="i4">Dear, my dear one!</span></i>
</div><div class="stanza">
<span class="i1">Show me the way,<br /></span>
<span class="i2">Heart of my heart!<br /></span>
<i><span class="i2">Come hither, dearest, come hither,<br /></span>
<span class="i4">Come with me!</span></i>
</div></div>
<p>"And then I saw that it was a mist, and
that I was alone. But now this night it is
that I feel the breath on the soles of my
feet."</p>
<p>And with that I knew there was no hope.
"<i>Ma tha sin an dàn!</i> ... if that be ordained,"
was all that rose to my lips. It was that night
he died. I fell asleep in the second hour.
When I woke in the grey dawn, his face was
greyer than that, and more cold.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span></p>
<hr style="width: 65%;" />
<h2>THE SEA-MADNESS</h2>
<p>I know a man who keeps a little store in a
village by one of the lochs of Argyll. He is
about fifty, is insignificant, commonplace, in his
interests parochial, and on Sundays painful to
see in his sleek respectability. He lives within
sight of the green and grey waters, above
which grey mountains stand; across the kyle
is a fair wilderness; but to my knowledge he
never for pleasure goes upon the hills, nor
stands by the shore, unless it be of a Saturday
night to watch the herring-boats come in, or on
a Sabbath afternoon when he has word with a
friend.</p>
<p>Yet this man is one of the strangest men I
have met or am like to meet. From himself
I have never heard word but the commonest,
and that in a manner somewhat servile. I know
his one intimate friend, however. At intervals
(sometimes of two or three years, latterly each
year for three years in succession) this village
chandler forgets, and is suddenly become
what he was, or what some ancestor was, in
unremembered days.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span></p>
<p>For a day or two he is listless, in a still
sadness; speaking, when he has to speak, in
a low voice; and often looking about him
with sidelong eyes. Then one day he will
leave his counter and go to the shed behind
his shop, and stand for a time frowning and
whispering, or perhaps staring idly, and then
go bareheaded up the hillside, and along
tangled ways of bog and heather, and be seen
no more for weeks.</p>
<p>He goes down through the Wilderness locally
called The Broken Rocks. When he is there,
he is a strong man, leaping like a goat—swift
and furtive. At times he strips himself bare,
and sits on a rock staring at the sun. Oftenest
he walks along the shore, or goes stumbling
among weedy boulders, calling loudly upon the
sea. His friend, of whom I have spoken, told
me that he had again and again seen Anndra
stoop and lift handfuls out of the running wave
and throw the water above his head while he
screamed or shouted strange Gaelic words,
some incoherent, some old as the grey rocks.
Once he was seen striding into the sea, batting
it with his hands, smiting the tide-swell, and
defying it and deriding it, with stifled laughters
that gave way to cries and sobs of broken hate
and love.</p>
<p>He sang songs to it. He threw bracken,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</a></span>
and branches, and stones at it, cursing: then
falling on his knees would pray, and lift the
water to his lips, and put it on his head. He
loved the sea as a man loves a woman. It was
his light o' love: his love: his God. Than that
desire of his I have not heard of any more
terrible. To love the wind and the salt wave,
and be for ever mocked of the one and baffled
of the other; to lift a heart of flame, and have
the bleak air quench it; to stoop, whispering,
and kiss the wave, and have its saltness sting
the lips and blind the eyes: this indeed is to
know that bitter thing of which so many have
died after tears, broken hearts, and madness.</p>
<p>His friend, whom I will call Neil, once came
upon him when he was in dread. Neil was in
a boat, and had sailed close inshore on the
flow. Anndra saw him, and screamed.</p>
<p>"I know who you are! Keep away!" he
cried. "<i>Fear faire na h'aon sùla</i>—I know you
for the One-Eyed Watcher!"</p>
<p>"Then," said Neil, "the salt wave went out
of his eyes and he knew me, and fell on his
knees, and wept, and said he was dying of an
old broken love. And with that he ran down
to the shore, and lifted a palmful of water to
his lips, so that for a moment foam hung upon
his tangled beard, and called out to his love,
and was sore bitter upon her, and then up and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</a></span>
laughed and scrambled out of sight, though I
heard him crying among the rocks."</p>
<p>I asked Neil who the One-Eyed Watcher
was. He said he was a man who had never
died and never lived. He had only one eye,
but that could see through anything except
grey granite, the grey crow's egg, and the grey
wave that swims at the bottom. He could see
the dead in the water, and watched for them:
he could see those on the land who came
down near the sea, if they had death on them.
On these he had no pity. But he was unseen
except at dusk and in the grey dawn. He
came out of a grave. He was not a man, but
he lived upon the deaths of men. It was
worse to be alive, and see him, than to be
dead and at his feet.</p>
<p>When the man Anndra's madness went
away from him—sometimes in a week or two
weeks, sometimes not for three weeks or
more—he would come back across the hill.
In the dark he would slip down through the
bracken and bog-myrtle, and wait a while
among the ragged fuchsias at the dyke of his
potato-patch. Then he would creep in at the
window of his room, or perhaps lift the door-latch
and go quietly to his bed. Once Neil was
there when he returned. Neil was speaking
to Anndra's sister, who kept house for the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</a></span>
poor man. They heard a noise, and the
sudden flurried clucking of hens.</p>
<p>"It's Anndra," said the woman, with a
catch in her throat; and they sat in silence,
till the door opened. He had been away five
weeks, and hair and beard were matted, and
his face was death-white; but he had already
slipped into his habitual clothes, and looked
the quiet respectable man he was. The two
who were waiting for him did not speak.</p>
<p>"It's a fine night," he said; "it's a fine
night, an' no wind.—Marget, it's time we had
in mair o' thae round cheeses fra Inverary."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</a></span></p>
<hr style="width: 65%;" />
<h2>EARTH, FIRE, AND WATER</h2>
<p>In "The Sea-Madness" I have told of a
man—a quiet dull man, a chandler of a little
Argyll loch-town—who, at times, left his
counter, and small canny ways, and went out
into a rocky wilderness, and became mad with
the sea. I have heard of many afflicted in
some such wise, and have known one or two.</p>
<p>In a tale written a few years ago, "The
Ninth Wave," I wrote of one whom I knew,
one Ivor MacNeill, or "Carminish," so called
because of his farm between the hills Strondeval
and Rondeval, near the Obb of Harris in
the Outer Hebrides. This man heard the
secret calling of the ninth wave. None may
hear that, when there is no wave on the sea,
or when perhaps he is inland, and not follow.
That following is always to the ending of all
following. For a long while Carminish put
his fate from him. He went to other isles:
wherever he went he heard the call of the sea.
"Come," it cried, "come, come away!" He
passed at last to a kinsman's croft on Aird-Vanish
in the island of Taransay. He was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</a></span>
not free there. He stopped at a place where he
had no kin, and no memories, and at a hidden,
quiet farm. This was at Eilean Mhealastaidh,
which is under the morning shadow of
Griomabhal on the mainland. His nights
there were a sleepless dread. He went to
other places. The sea called. He went at
last to his cousin <ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both 'Eachain' and 'Eachainn' MacEachainn were used in this text. This was retained.">Eachainn</ins> MacEachainn's
bothy, near Callernish in the Lews, where the
Druid Stones stand by the shore and hear
nothing for ever but the noise of the waves and
the cry of the sea-wind. There, weary in hope,
he found peace at last. He slept, and none
called upon him. He began to smile, and to
hope.</p>
<p>One night the two were at the porridge,
and <ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both 'Eachain' and 'Eachainn' MacEachainn were used in this text. This was retained.">Eachainn</ins> was muttering his <i>Bui 'cheas
dha 'n Ti</i>, the Thanks to the Being, when
Carminish leaped to his feet, and with a
white face stood shaking like a rope in the
wind.</p>
<p>In the grey dawn they found his body, stiff
and salt with the ooze.</p>
<p>I did not know, but I have heard of another
who had a light tragic end. Some say he was
witless. Others, that he had the Friday-Fate
upon him. I do not know what evil he had
done, but "some one" had met him and said
to him "<i>Bidh ruith na h'Aoin' ort am</i><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</a></span>
<i>Feasda</i>," "The Friday-Fate will follow you
for ever." So it was said. But I was told this
of him: that he had been well and strong and
happy, and did not know he had a terrible gift,
that some have who are born by the sea. It
is not well to be born on a Friday night,
within sound of the sea; or on certain days.
This gift is the "<i>Eòlas na h'Aoine</i>," the
Friday-Spell. He who has this gift must not
look upon any other while bathing: if he
does, that swimmer must drown. This man,
whom I will call Finlay, had this eòlas. Three
times the evil happened. But the third time
he knew what he did: the man who swam in
the sunlight loved the same woman as Finlay
loved; so he stood on the shore, and looked,
and laughed. When the body was brought
home, the woman struck Finlay in the face.
He grew strange after a time, and at last witless.
A year later it was a cold February. Finlay
went to and fro singing an old February rhyme
beginning:</p>
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0"><i>Feadag, Feadag, mathair Faoillich fhuair!</i></span>
</div></div>
<p>(Plover, plover, Mother of the bleak Month).
He was watching a man ploughing. Suddenly
he threw down his cromak. He leaped
over a dyke, and ran to the shore, calling,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</a></span>
"I'm coming! I'm coming! Don't pull me—I'm
coming!" He fell upon the rocks, which
had a blue bloom on them like fruit, for they
were covered with mussels; and he was torn,
so that his hands and face were streaming red.
"I am your red, red love," he cried, "sweetheart,
my love"; and with that he threw himself
into the sea.</p>
<p>More often the sea-call is not a madness,
but an inward voice. I have been told of a
man who was a farmer in Carrick of Ayr.
He left wife and home because of the calling
of the sea. But when he was again in the
far isles, where he had lived formerly, he
was well once more. Another man heard the
sobbing of the tide among <ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both 'sea-weed' and 'seaweed' were used in this text. This was retained.">seaweed</ins> whenever
he dug in his garden: and gave up all, and
even the woman he loved, and left. She won
him back, by her love; but on the night before
their marriage, in that inland place where her
farm was, he slipt away and was not seen
again. Again, there was the man of whom I
have spoken in "Iona," who went to the
mainland, but could not see to plough because
the brown fallows became waves that
splashed noisily about him: and how he went
to Canada and got work in a great warehouse,
but among the bales of merchandise
heard continually the singular note of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</a></span>
sandpiper, while every hour the <ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both 'sea-fowl' and 'seafowl' were used in this text. This was retained.">sea-fowl</ins>
confused him with their crying.</p>
<p>I have myself in lesser degree, known this
irresistible longing. I am not fond of towns,
but some years ago I had to spend a winter in
a great city. It was all-important to me not to
leave during January; and in one way I was
not ill-pleased, for it was a wild winter. But
one night I woke, hearing a rushing sound in
the street—the sound of water. I would have
thought no more of it, had I not recognised
the troubled noise of the tide, and the sucking
and lapsing of the flow in weedy hollows.
I rose and looked out. It was moonlight, and
there was no water. When, after sleepless
hours, I rose in the grey morning I heard the
splash of waves. All that day and the next
I heard the continual noise of waves. I could
not write or read; at last I could not rest.
On the afternoon of the third day the waves
dashed up against the house. I said what
I could to my friends, and left by the night
train. In the morning we (for a kinswoman
was with me) stood on Greenock Pier waiting
for the Hebridean steamer, the <i>Clansman</i>,
and before long were landed on an island,
almost the nearest we could reach, and
one that I loved well. We had to be landed
some miles from the place I wanted to go to,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</a></span>
and it was a long and cold journey. The
innumerable little waterfalls hung in icicles
among the mosses, ferns, and white birches
on the roadsides. Before we reached our
destination, we saw a wonderful sight. From
three great mountains, their flanks flushed
with faint rose, their peaks, white and solemn,
vast columns of white smoke ascended. It
was as though volcanic fires had once again
broken their long stillness. Then we saw
what it was: the north wind (unheard, unfelt,
where we stood) blew a hurricane against
the other side of the peaks, and, striking upon
the leagues of hard snow, drove it upward
like smoke, till the columns rose gigantic and
hung between the silence of the white peaks
and the silence of the stars.</p>
<p>That night, with the sea breaking less than
a score yards from where I lay, I slept,
though for three nights I had not been able
to sleep. When I woke, my trouble was
gone.</p>
<p>It was but a reminder to me. But to others
it was more than that.</p>
<p>I remember that winter for another thing,
which I may write of here.</p>
<p>From the fisherman's wife with whom I
lodged I learned that her daughter had recently
borne a son, but was now up and about<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[Pg 314]</a></span>
again, though for the first time, that morning.
We went to her, about noon. She was not
in the house. A small cabbage-garden lay
behind, and beyond it the mossy edge of a
wood of rowans and birches broke steeply in
bracken and <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'lonroid'">loneroid</ins>. The girl was there, and
had taken the child from her breast, and
kneeling, was touching the earth with the
small lint-white head.</p>
<p>I asked her what she was doing. She said
it was the right thing to do; that as soon as
possible after the child was born, the mother
should take it—and best, at noon, and facing
the sun—and touch its brow to the earth.
My friends (like many islanders of the Inner
Hebrides, they had no Gaelic) used an unfamiliar
phrase; "It's the old Mothering." It
was, in truth, the sacrament of Our Mother,
but in a far ancient sense. I do not doubt
the rite is among the most primitive of those
practised by the Celtic peoples.</p>
<p>I have not seen it elsewhere, though I have
heard of it. Probably it is often practised yet
in remote places. Even where we were, the
women were somewhat fearful lest "the
minister" heard of what the young mother
had done. They do not love these beautiful
symbolic actions, these "ministers," to whom
they are superstitions. This old, pagan,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[Pg 315]</a></span>
sacramental earth-rite is, certainly, beautiful.
How could one better be blessed, on coming
into life, than to have the kiss of that
ancient Mother of whom we are all children?
There must be wisdom in that first touch. I
do not doubt that behind the symbol lies, at
times, the old miraculous communication.
For, even in this late day, some of us are
born with remembrance, with dumb worship,
with intimate and uplifting kinship to that
Mother.</p>
<p>Since then I have asked often, in many
parts of the Highlands and Islands, for what
is known of this rite, when and where practised,
and what meanings it bears; and some
day I hope to put these notes on record. I
am convinced that the Earth-Blessing is more
ancient than the westward migration of the
Celtic peoples.</p>
<p>I have both read and heard of another
custom, though I have not known of it at
first-hand. The last time I was told of it
was of a crofter and his wife in North Uist.
The once general custom is remembered in
a familiar Gaelic saying, the English of
which is, "He got a turn through the smoke."
After baptism, a child was taken from the
breast, and handed by its mother (sometimes
the child was placed in a basket) to the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[Pg 316]</a></span>
father, across the fire. I do not think, but
am not sure, if any signal meaning lie in the
mother handing the child to the father. When
the rite is spoken of, as often as not it is only
"the parents" that the speaker alludes to.
The rite is universally recognised as a spell
against the dominion, or agency, of evil
spirits. In Coll and Tiree, it is to keep the
Hidden People from touching or singing to
the child. I think it is an ancient propitiatory
rite, akin to that which made our ancestors
touch the new-born to earth; as that which
makes some islanders still baptize a child with
a little spray from the running wave, or a
fingerful of water from the tide at the flow;
as that which made an old woman lift me as
a little child and hold me up to the south
wind, "to make me strong and fair and always
young, and to keep back death and sorrow,
and to keep me safe from other winds and evil
spirits." Old Barabal has gone where the
south wind blows, in blossom and flowers and
green leaves, across the pastures of Death;
and I ... alas, I can but wish that One
stronger than she, for all her love, will lift me,
as a child again, to the Wind, and pass me
across the Fire, and set me down again upon
a new Earth.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[Pg 317]</a></span></p>
<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[Pg 318]</a></span></p>
<h2>FROM "GREEN FIRE"</h2>
<div class="blockquot"><p><i>Be not troubled in the inward Hope. It lives in
beauty, and the hand of God slowly wakens it year by
year, and through the many ways of Sorrow. It is an
Immortal, and its name is Joy.</i></p></div>
<p class="right"><span style="margin-right: 5em;">F. M.</span><br />
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[Pg 319]</a></span></p>
<hr style="width: 65%;" />
<h2>The Herdsman</h2>
<p>On the night when Alan Carmichael with
his old servant and friend, Ian M'Ian, arrived
in Balnaree ("Baile'-na-Righ"), the little
village wherein was all that Borosay had to
boast of in the way of civic life, he could not
disguise from himself that he was regarded
askance.</p>
<p>Rightly or wrongly, he took this to be
resentment because of his having wed (alas, he
recalled, wed and lost) the daughter of the
man who had killed Ailean Carmichael in a
duel. So possessed was he by this idea, that
he did not remember how little likely the
islanders were to know anything of him or his
beyond the fact that Ailean MacAlasdair Rhona
had died abroad.</p>
<p>The trouble became more than an imaginary
one when, on the morrow, he tried to find
a boat for the passage to Rona. But for
the Frozen Hand, as the triple-peaked hill
to the south of Balnaree was called, Rona<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[Pg 320]</a></span>
would have been visible; nor was it, with
a fair wind, more than an hour's sail distant.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, he could detect in every one
to whom he spoke a strange reluctance. At
last he asked an old man of his own surname
why there was so much difficulty.</p>
<p>In the island way, Seumas Carmichael replied
that the people on Elleray, the island
adjacent to Rona, were unfriendly.</p>
<p>"But unfriendly at what?"</p>
<p>"Well, at this and at that. But for one
thing, they are not having any dealings with
the Carmichaels. They are all Macneills
there, Macneills of Barra. There is a feud, I
am thinking; though I know nothing of it; no,
not I."</p>
<p>"But Seumas mac Eachainn, you know well
yourself that there are almost no Carmichaels
to have a feud with! There are you and
your brother, and there is your cousin over at
Sgòrr-Bhan on the other side of Borosay.
Who else is there?"</p>
<p>To this the man could say nothing. Distressed,
Alan sought Ian and bade him find
out what he could. He also was puzzled and
uneasy. That some evil was at work could
not be doubted, and that it was secret boded
ill.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[Pg 321]</a></span></p>
<p>Ian was a stranger in Borosay because of
his absence since boyhood; but, after all, Ian
mac Iain mhic Dhonuill was to the islanders
one of themselves; and though he came there
with a man under a shadow (though this
phrase was not used in Ian's hearing), that
was not his fault.</p>
<p>And when he reminded them that for these
many years he had not seen the old woman,
his sister Giorsal; and spoke of her, and of
their long separation, and of his wish to see
her again before he died, there was no more
hesitation, but only kindly willingness to
help.</p>
<p>Within an hour a boat was ready to take
the homefarers to the Isle of Caves, as Rona
is sometimes called. Before the hour was
gone, they, with the stores of food and other
things, were slipping seaward out of Borosay
Haven.</p>
<p>The moment the headland was rounded,
the heights of Rona came into view. Great
gaunt cliffs they are, precipices of black basalt;
though on the south side they fall away
in grassy declivities which hang a greenness
over the wandering wave for ever sobbing
round that desolate shore. But it was not till
the Sgòrr-Dhu, a conical black rock at the
south-east end of the island, was reached, that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[Pg 322]</a></span>
the stone keep, known as Caisteal-Rhona,
came in sight.</p>
<p>It stands at the landward extreme of a
rocky ledge, on the margin of a green <ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both 'airidh' and 'àiridh' were used in this text. This was retained."><i>àiridh</i></ins>.
Westward is a small dark-blue sea loch, no
more than a narrow haven. To the north-west
rise precipitous cliffs; northward, above
the green pasture and a stretch of heather, is a
woodland belt of some three or four hundred
pine-trees. It well deserves its poetic name of
I-monair, as Aodh the Islander sang of it;
for it echoes ceaselessly with wind and wave.
If the waves dash against it from the south or
east, a loud crying is upon the faces of the
rocks; if from the north or north-east, there
are unexpected inland silences, but amid the
pines a continual voice. It is when the wind
blows from the south-west, or the huge Atlantic
billows surge out of the west, that Rona is
given over to an indescribable tumult. Through
the whole island goes the myriad echo of a
continuous booming; and within this a sound
as though waters were pouring through vast
hidden conduits in the heart of every precipice,
every rock, every boulder. This is because of
the sea-arcades of which it consists, for from
the westward the island has been honeycombed
by the waves. No living man has ever
traversed all those mysterious, winding sea-galleries.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[Pg 323]</a></span>
Many have perished in the attempt.
In the olden days the Uisteans and Barrovians
sought refuge there from the marauding
Danes and other pirates out of Lochlin; and
in the time when the last Scottish king took
shelter in the west, many of his island
followers found safety among these perilous
arcades.</p>
<p>Some of them reach an immense height.
These are filled with a pale green gloom
which in fine weather, and at noon or toward
<ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both 'sun-down' and 'sundown' were used in this text. This was retained.">sundown</ins>, becomes almost radiant. But most
have only a dusky green obscurity, and some
are at all times dark with a darkness that
has seen neither sun nor moon nor star for
unknown ages. Sometimes, there, a phosphorescent
wave will spill a livid or a cold
blue flame, and for a moment a vast gulf of
dripping basalt be revealed; but day and
night, night and day, from year to year, from
age to age, that awful wave-clamant darkness
is unbroken.</p>
<p>To the few who know some of the secrets
of the passages, it is possible, except when a
gale blows from any quarter but the north,
to thread these dim arcades in a narrow boat,
and so to pass from the Hebrid Seas to the
outer Atlantic. But for the unwary there
might well be no return; for in that maze<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[Pg 324]</a></span>
of winding galleries and sea-washed, shadowy
arcades, confusion is but another name for
death. Once bewildered, there is no hope;
and the lost adventurer will remain there
idly drifting from barren passage to passage,
till he perish of hunger and thirst, or,
maddened by the strange and appalling
gloom and the unbroken silence—for there
the muffled voice of the sea is no more
than a whisper—leap into the green waters
which for ever slide stealthily from ledge to
ledge.</p>
<p>Now, as Alan approached his remote home,
he thought of these death-haunted corridors,
avenues of the grave, as they are called in
the "Cumha Fhir-Mearanach Aonghas mhic
Dhonuill"—the Lament of mad Angus Macdonald.</p>
<p>When at last the unwieldy brown coble
sailed into the little haven, it was to create
unwonted excitement among the few fishermen
who put in there frequently for bait. A
group of eight or ten was upon the rocky
ledge beyond Caisteal-Rhona, among them
the elderly woman who was sister to Ian mac
Iain.</p>
<p>At Alan's request, Ian went ashore in
advance in a small punt. He was to wave
his hand if all were well, for Alan could not<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[Pg 325]</a></span>
but feel apprehensive on account of the
strange ill-will that had shown itself at
Borosay.</p>
<p>It was with relief that he saw the signal
when, after Ian had embraced his sister, and
shaken hands with all the fishermen, he had
explained that the son of Ailean Carmichael
was come out of the south, and had come to
live a while at Caisteal-Rhona.</p>
<p>All there uncovered and waved their hats.
Then a shout of welcome went up, and Alan's
heart was glad. But the moment he had set
foot on land he saw a startled look come
into the eyes of the fishermen—a look that
deepened swiftly into one of aversion, almost
of fear.</p>
<p>One by one the men moved away, awkward
in their embarrassment. Not one came forward
with outstretched hand, or said a word of
welcome.</p>
<p>At first amazed, then indignant, Ian
reproached them. They received his words
in shamed silence. Even when with a bitter
tongue he taunted them, they answered
nothing.</p>
<p>"Giorsal," said Ian, turning in despair to his
sister, "is it madness that you have?"</p>
<p>But even she was no longer the same. Her
eyes were fixed upon Alan with a look of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[Pg 326]</a></span>
dread, and indeed of horror. It was unmistakable,
and Alan himself was conscious of it
with a strange sinking of the heart. "Speak,
woman!" he demanded. "What is the meaning
of this thing? Why do you and these men
look at me askance?"</p>
<p>"God forbid!" answered Giorsal Macdonald
with white lips; "God forbid that we look
at the son of Ailean Carmichael askance.
But——"</p>
<p>"But what?"</p>
<p>With that the woman put her apron over
her head and moved away, muttering strange
words.</p>
<p>"Ian, what is this mystery?"</p>
<p>"How am I for knowing, Alan mac Ailean?
It is all a darkness to me also. But I will be
finding that out soon."</p>
<p>That, however, was easier for Ian to say
than to do. Meanwhile, the brown coble
tacked back to Borosay, and the fisherman
sailed away to the Barra coasts, and Alan and
Ian were left solitary in their wild and remote
home.</p>
<p>But in that very solitude Alan found healing.
From what Giorsal hinted, he came to
believe that the fishermen had experienced
one of those strange dream-waves which, in
remote isles, occur at times, when whole<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[Pg 327]</a></span>
communities will be wrought by the self-same
fantasy. When day by day went past, and no
one came near, he at first was puzzled, and
even resentful; but this passed, and soon he
was glad to be alone. Ian, however, knew that
there was another cause for the inexplicable
aversion that had been shown. But he was
silent, and kept a patient watch for the hour
that the future held in its shroud. As for
Giorsal, she was dumb; but no more looked
at Alan askance.</p>
<p>And so the weeks went. Occasionally a
fishing smack came with the provisions, for the
weekly despatch of which Alan had arranged
at Loch Boisdale, and sometimes the Barra
men put in at the haven, though they would
never stay long, and always avoided Alan as
much as was possible.</p>
<p>In that time Alan and Ian came to know and
love their strangely beautiful island home.
Hours and hours at a time they spent
exploring the dim, green, winding sea-galleries,
till at last they knew the chief
arcades thoroughly.</p>
<p>They had even ventured into some of the
narrow, snake-like inner passages, but never
for long, because of the awe and dread these
held, silent estuaries of the grave.</p>
<p>Week after week passed, and to Alan it<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[Pg 328]</a></span>
was as the going of the grey owl's wing, swift
and silent.</p>
<p><br />Then it was that, on a day of the days, he
was suddenly stricken with a new and startling
dread.</p>
<h3><br />II</h3>
<p>In the hour that this terror came upon
him Alan was alone upon the high slopes of
Rona, where the grass fails and the lichen
yellows at close on a thousand feet above the
sea.</p>
<p>The day had been cloudless since sunrise.
The sea was as the single vast petal of an
azure flower, all of one unbroken blue save
for the shadows of the scattered isles and
the slow-drifting mauve or purple of floating
weed. Countless birds congregated from
every quarter. Guillemots and puffins, cormorants
and northern divers, everywhere
darted, swam, or slept upon the listless ocean,
whose deep breathing no more than lifted a
league-long calm here and there, to lapse
breathlike as it rose. Through the not less
silent quietudes of air the grey skuas swept
with curving flight, and the narrow-winged
terns made a constant white shimmer. At remote<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">[Pg 329]</a></span>
altitudes the gannet motionlessly drifted.
Oceanward the great widths of calm were rent
now and again by the shoulders of the porpoises
which followed the herring trail, their
huge, black, revolving bodies looming large
above the silent wave. Not a boat was visible
anywhere; not even upon the most distant
horizons did a brown sail fleck itself duskily
against the skyward wall of steely blue.</p>
<p>In the great stillness which prevailed, the
noise of the surf beating around the promontory
of Aonaig was audible as a whisper;
though even in that windless hour the confused
rumour of the sea, moving through the
arcades of the island, filled the hollow of
the air overhead. Ever since the early morning
Alan had moved under a strange gloom.
Out of that golden glory of midsummer a
breath of joyous life should have reached his
heart, but it was not so. For sure, there is
sometimes in the quiet beauty of summer an
air of menace, a premonition of suspended
force—a force antagonistic and terrible. All
who have lived in these lonely isles know the
peculiar intensity of this summer melancholy.
No noise of wind, no prolonged season of untimely
rains, no long baffling of mists in all
the drear inclemencies of that remote region,
can produce the same ominous and even paralysing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">[Pg 330]</a></span>
gloom sometimes born of ineffable
peace and beauty. Is it that in the human
soul there is a mysterious kinship with the
outer soul which we call Nature; and
that in these few supreme hours which
come at the full of the year, we are, sometimes,
suddenly aware of the tremendous
forces beneath and behind us, momently quiescent?</p>
<p>Determined to shake off this dejection,
Alan wandered high among the upland solitudes.
There a cool air moved always, even
in the noons of August; and there, indeed,
often had come upon him a deep peace. But
whatsoever the reason, only a deeper despondency
possessed him. An incident, significant
in that mood, at that time, happened then. A
few hundred yards away from where he
stood, half hidden in a little glen where a fall
of water tossed its spray among the shadows
of rowan and birch, was the bothie of a
woman, the wife of Neil MacNeill, a fisherman
of Aoinaig. She was there, he knew, for
the summer pasturing; and even as he recollected
this, he heard the sound of her voice
as she sang somewhere by the burnside.
Moving slowly toward the corrie, he stopped
at a mountain ash which over hung a pool.
Looking down, he saw the woman, Morag<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">[Pg 331]</a></span>
MacNeill, washing and peeling potatoes in the
clear brown water. And as she washed and
peeled, she sang an old-time shealing hymn
of the Virgin-Shepherdess, of Michael the
White, and of Columan the Dove. It was a
song that, years ago, far away in Brittany,
he had heard from his mother's lips. He listened
now to every word of the doubly
familiar Gaelic; and when Morag ended, the
tears were in his eyes, and he stood for a
while as one under a spell.<a name="FNanchor_13_13" id="FNanchor_13_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_13_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a></p>
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">"A Mhicheil mhin! nan steud geala,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">A choisin cios air Dragon fala,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Air ghaol Dia 'us Mhic Muire,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Sgaoil do sgiath oirnn dian sinn uile,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Sgaoil do sgiath oirnn dian sinn uile.</span>
</div><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">"A Mhoire ghradhach! Mathair <ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both 'Uain-ghil' and 'Uain ghil' were used in this text. This was retained.">Uain-ghil</ins>,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Cobhair oirnne, Oigh na h-uaisle;<br /></span>
<span class="i0">A rioghainn uai'reach! a <ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both 'bhuachaile' and 'bhuachaille' were used in this text. This was retained.">bhuachaille</ins> nan treud!<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Cum ar cuallach cuartaich sinn le cheil,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Cum ar cuallach cuartaich sinn le cheil.</span>
</div><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">"A Chalum-Chille: chairdeil, chaoimh,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">An ainm Athar, Mic, 'us Spioraid Naoimh,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Trid na Trithinn! trid na Triath!<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Comraig sinne, gleidh ar trial,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Comraig sinne, gleidh ar trial.</span>
</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">[Pg 332]</a></span><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">"Athair! A Mhic! A Spioraid Naoimh!<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Bi'eadh an Tri-Aon leinn, a la's a dh-oidhche!<br /></span>
<span class="i0">'S air chul nan tonn, no air thaobh nan beann,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Bi'dh ar Mathair leinn, 's bith a lamh fo'r ceann,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Bi'dh ar Mathair leinn, 's bith a lamh fo'r ceann.</span>
</div><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">"Thou gentle Michael of the white steed,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Who subdued the Dragon of blood,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">For love of God and the Son of Mary,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Spread over us thy wing, shield us all!<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Spread over us thy wing, shield us all!<br /></span>
</div><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">"Mary beloved! Mother of the White Lamb,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Protect us, thou Virgin of nobleness,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Queen of beauty! Shepherdess of the flocks!<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Keep our cattle, surround us together,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Keep our cattle, surround us together.</span>
</div><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">"Thou Columba, the friendly, the kind,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">In name of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit Holy,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Through the Three-in-One, through the Three,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Encompass us, guard our procession,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Encompass us, guard our procession.</span>
</div><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">"Thou Father! thou Son! thou Spirit Holy!<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Be the Three-in-One with us day and night.<br /></span>
<span class="i0">And on the crested wave, or on the mountain side.<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Our Mother is there, and her arm is under our head,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Our Mother is there, and her arm is under our head."</span>
</div></div>
<p>Alan found himself repeating whisperingly,
and again and again<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">[Pg 333]</a></span>—</p>
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">"Bi 'eadh an Tri-Aon leinn, a la's a dh-oidhche!<br /></span>
<span class="i0">'S air chul nan tonn, no air thaobh nam beann."</span>
</div></div>
<p>Suddenly the woman glanced upward, perhaps
because of the shadow that moved against
the green bracken below. With a startled
gesture she sprang to her feet. Alan looked
at her kindly, saying, with a smile, "Sure,
Morag nic Tormod, it is not fear you need be
having of one who is your friend." Then,
seeing that the woman stared at him with
something of terror as well as surprise, he
spoke to her again.</p>
<p>"Sure, Morag, I am no stranger that you
should be looking at me with those foreign
eyes." He laughed as he spoke, and made as
though he were about to descend to the burnside.
Unmistakably, however, the woman did
not desire his company. He saw this, with
the pain and bewilderment which had come
upon him whenever the like happened, as so
often it had happened since he had come to
Rona.</p>
<p>"Tell me, Morag MacNeill, what is the
meaning of this strangeness that is upon you?
Why do you not speak? Why do you turn
away your head?"</p>
<p>Suddenly the woman flashed her black eyes
upon him.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">[Pg 334]</a></span></p>
<p>"Have you ever heard of <i>am Buachaill <ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both Buachaill 'Ban' and 'Bàn' were used in this text. This was retained.">Bàn</ins>—am
Buachaill Buidhe?</i>"</p>
<p>He looked at her in amaze. <i>Am Buachaill
<ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both Buachaill 'Ban' and 'Bàn' were used in this text. This was retained.">Bàn</ins>!</i> ... The fair-haired Herdsman, the
yellow-haired Herdsman! What could she
mean? In days gone by, he knew, the
islanders, in the evil time after Culloden, had
so named the fugitive Prince who had sought
shelter in the Hebrides; and in some of the
runes of an older day still the Saviour of the
World was sometimes so called, just as Mary
was called <i><ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both 'bhuachaile' and 'bhuachaille' were used in this text. This was retained.">Bhuachaile</ins> nan treud</i>—Shepherdess
of the Flock. But it could be no allusion to
either of these that was intended.</p>
<p>"Who is the Herdsman of whom you speak,
Morag?"</p>
<p>"Is it no knowledge you have of him at all,
Alan MacAilean?"</p>
<p>"None. I know nothing of the man,
nothing of what is in your mind. Who is the
Herdsman?"</p>
<p>"You will not be putting evil upon me
because that you saw me here by the pool
before I saw you?"</p>
<p>"Why should I, woman? Why do you
think that I have the power of the evil eye?
Sure, I have done no harm to you or
yours, and wish none. But if it is for peace
to you to know it, it is no evil I wish<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">[Pg 335]</a></span>
you, but only good. The Blessing of Himself
be upon you and yours and upon your
house!"</p>
<p>The woman looked relieved, but still cast
her furtive gaze upon Alan, who no longer
attempted to join her.</p>
<p>"I cannot be speaking the thing that is in
my mind, Alan MacAilean. It is not for me
to be saying that thing. But if you have no
knowledge of the Herdsman, sure it is only
another wonder of the wonders, and God has
the sun on that shadow, to the Stones be it
said."</p>
<p>"But tell me, Morag, who is the Herdsman
of whom you speak?"</p>
<p>For a minute or more the woman stood
regarding him intently. Then slowly, and
with obvious reluctance, she spoke—</p>
<p>"Why have you appeared to the people
upon the isles, sometimes by moonlight, sometimes
by day or in the dusk, and have foretold
upon one and all who dwell here black
gloom and the red flame of sorrow? Why
have you, who are an outcast because of
what lies between you and another, pretended
to be a messenger of the Son—ay, for sure,
even, God forgive you, to be the Son Himself?"</p>
<p>Alan stared at the woman. For a time he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">[Pg 336]</a></span>
could utter no word. Had some extraordinary
delusion spread among the islanders, and
was there in the insane accusation of this
woman the secret of that which had so
troubled him?</p>
<p>"This is all an empty darkness to me,
Morag. Speak more plainly, woman. What
is all this madness that you say? When have
I spoken of having any mission, or of being
other than I am? When have I foretold evil
upon you or yours, or upon the isles beyond?
What man has ever dared to say that Alan
MacAilean of Rona is an outcast? And what
sin is it that lies between me and another of
which you know?"</p>
<p>It was impossible for Morag MacNeill to
doubt the sincerity of the man who spoke to
her. She crossed herself, and muttered the
words of a <i>seun</i> for the protection of the soul
against the demon powers. Still, even while
she believed in Alan's sincerity, she could not
reconcile it with that terrible and strange
mystery with which rumour had filled her
ears. So, having nothing to say in reply to
his eager questions, she cast down her eyes
and kept silence.</p>
<p>"Speak, Morag, for Heaven's sake! Speak
if you are a true woman; you that see a man
in sore pain, in pain, too, for that of which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">[Pg 337]</a></span>
he knows nothing, and of the ill of which he
is guiltless!"</p>
<p>But, keeping her face averted, the woman
muttered simply, "I have no more to say."
With that she turned and moved slowly along
the pathway which led from the pool to her
hillside bothie.</p>
<p>With a sigh, Alan walked slowly away.
What wonder, he thought, that deep gloom
had been upon him that day? Here, in the
woman's mysterious words, was the shadow
of that shadow.</p>
<p>Slowly, brooding deep over what he had
heard, he crossed the Monadh-nan-Con, as the
hill-tract there was called, till he came to the
rocky wilderness known as the Slope of the
Caverns.</p>
<p>There for a time he leaned against a high
boulder, idly watching a few sheep nibbling
the short grass which grew about some of the
many caves which opened in slits or wide
hollows. Below and beyond he saw the pale
blue silence of the sea meet the pale blue
silence of the sky; south-westward, the grey
film of the coast of Ulster; westward, again
the illimitable vast of sea and sky, infinitudes of
calm, as though the blue silence of heaven
breathed in that one motionless wave, as
though that wave sighed and drew the horizons<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">[Pg 338]</a></span>
to its heart. From where he stood he could
hear the murmur of the surge whispering all
round the isle; the surge that, even on days of
profound stillness, makes a murmurous rumour
among the rocks and shingle of the island
shores. Not upon the moor-side, but in the
blank hollows of the caves around him, he
heard, as in gigantic shells, the moving of a
strange and solemn rhythm: wave-haunted
shells indeed, for the echo that was bruited
from one to the other came from beneath,
from out of those labyrinthine passages and
dim, shadowy sea-arcades, where among the
melancholy green glooms the Atlantic waters
lose themselves in a vain wandering.</p>
<p>For long he leaned there, revolving in his
mind the mystery of Morag MacNeill's words.
Then, abruptly, the stillness was broken by
the sound of a dislodged stone. So little
did he expect the foot of fellow-man, that
he did not turn at what he thought to be the
slip of a sheep. But when upon the slope of
the grass, a little way beyond where he stood,
a dusky blue shadow wavered fantastically,
he swung round with a sudden instinct of
dread.</p>
<p>And this was the dread which, after these
long weeks since he had come to Rona, was
upon Alan Carmichael.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">[Pg 339]</a></span></p>
<p>For there, standing quietly by another
boulder, at the mouth of another cave, was a
man in all appearance identical with himself.
Looking at this apparition, he beheld one of
the same height as himself, with hair of the
same hue, with eyes the same and features
the same, with the same carriage, the same
smile, the same expression. No, there, and
there alone, was any difference.</p>
<p>Sick at heart, Alan wondered if he looked
upon his own wraith. Familiar with the
legends of his people, it would have been no
strange thing to him that there, upon the hillside,
should appear the wraith of himself.
Had not old Ian McIain—and that, too,
though far away in a strange land—seen the
death of his mother moving upward from her
feet to her knees, from her knees to her
waist, from her waist to her neck, and, just
before the end, how the shroud darkened
along the face until it hid the eyes? Had
he not often heard from her, from Ian, of the
second self which so often appears beside the
living when already the shadow of doom is
upon him whose hours are numbered? Was
this, then, the reason of what had been his
inexplicable gloom? Was he indeed at the
extreme of life? Was his soul amid shallows,
already a rock upon a blank, inhospitable<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">[Pg 340]</a></span>
shore? If not, who or what was this second
self which leaned there negligently, looking
at him with scornful smiling lips, but with
intent, unsmiling eyes.</p>
<p>Slowly there came into his mind this
thought: How could a phantom, that was
itself intangible, throw a shadow upon the
grass, as though it were a living body? Sure,
a shadow there was indeed. It lay between
the apparition and himself. A legend heard
in boyhood came back to him; instinctively he
stooped and lifted a stone and flung it midway
into the shadow.</p>
<p>"Go back into the darkness," he cried, "if
out of the darkness you came; but if you be a
living thing, put out your hands!"</p>
<p>The shadow remained motionless. When
Alan looked again at his second self, he saw
that the scorn which had been upon the lips
was now in the eyes also. Ay, for sure,
scornful silent laughter it was that lay in those
cold wells of light. No phantom that; a man
he, even as Alan himself. His heart pulsed
like that of a trapped bird, but with the spoken
word his courage came back to him.</p>
<p>"Who are you?" he asked, in a voice
strange even in his own ears.</p>
<p>"<i>Am Buachaill</i>," replied the man in a voice
as low and strange. "I am the Herdsman."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">[Pg 341]</a></span></p>
<p>A new tide of fear surged in upon Alan.
That voice, was it not his own? that tone,
was it not familiar in his ears? When the
man spoke, he heard himself speak; sure, if
he were <i>Am Buachaill <ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both Buachaill 'Ban' and 'Bàn' were used in this text. This was retained.">Bàn</ins></i>, Alan, too, was
the Herdsman, though what fantastic destiny
might be his was all unknown to him.</p>
<p>"Come near," said the man, and now the
mocking light in his eyes was wild as cloud-fire—"come
near, oh <i>Buachaill <ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both Buachaill 'Ban' and 'Bàn' were used in this text. This was retained.">Bàn</ins></i>!"</p>
<p>With a swift movement, Alan sprang forward;
but as he leaped, his foot caught in a
spray of heather, and he stumbled and fell.
When he rose, he looked in vain for the man
who had called him. There was not a sign,
not a trace of any living being. For the first
few moments he believed it had all been a
delusion. Mortal being did not appear and
vanish in that ghostly way. Still, surely he
could not have mistaken the blank of that
place for a speaking voice, or out of nothingness
have fashioned the living phantom of
himself? Or could he? With that, he strode
forward and peered into the wide arch of the
cavern by which the man had stood. He
could not see far into it; but so far as it was
possible to see, he discerned neither man nor
shadow of man, nor anything that stirred; no,
not even the gossamer bloom of a beàrnan-bride,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">[Pg 342]</a></span>
that grew on a patch of grass a yard
or two within the darkness, had lost one of
its delicate filmy spires. He drew back, dismayed.
Then, suddenly, his heart leaped
again, for beyond all question, all possible
doubt, there, in the bent thyme, just where
the man had stood, was the imprint of his
feet. Even now the green sprays were moving
forward.</p>
<h3><br />III</h3>
<p>An hour passed, and Alan Carmichael had
not moved from the entrance to the cave. So
still was he that a ewe, listlessly wandering
in search of cooler grass, lay down after a
while, drowsily regarding him with her amber-coloured
eyes. All his thought was upon the
mystery of what he had seen. No delusion
this, he was sure. That was a man whom he
had seen. But who could he be? On so
small an island, inhabited by less than a score
of crofters, it was scarcely possible for one to
live for many weeks and not know the name
and face of every soul. Still, a stranger
might have come. Only, if this were so, why
should he call himself the Herdsman? There
was but one herdsman on Rona and he Angus
MacCormic, who lived at Einaval on the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343">[Pg 343]</a></span>
north side. In these outer isles, the shepherd
and the herdsman are appointed by the community,
and no man is allowed to be one or
the other at will, any more than to be a <i>maor</i>.
Then, too, if this man were indeed herdsman,
where was his <i>iomair-ionailtair</i>, his browsing
tract? Looking round him, Alan could perceive
nowhere any fitting pasture. Surely no
herdsman would be content with such an
<i>iomair a bhuachaill</i>—rig of the herdsman—as
that rocky wilderness where the soft green
grass grew in patches under this or that
boulder, on the sun side of this or that rocky
ledge. Again, he had given no name, but
called himself simply <i>Am Buachaill</i>. This was
how the woman Morag had spoken; did she
indeed mean this very man? and if so, what
lay in her words? But far beyond all other
bewilderment for him was that strange, that
indeed terrifying likeness to himself—a likeness
so absolute, so convincing, that he knew
he might himself easily have been deceived,
had he beheld the apparition in any place
where it was possible that a reflection could
have misled him.</p>
<p>Brooding thus, eye and ear were both alert
for the faintest sight or sound. But from the
interior of the cavern not a breath came.
Once, from among the jagged rocks high on<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344">[Pg 344]</a></span>
the west slope of Ben Einaval, he fancied he
heard an unwonted sound—that of human
laughter, but laughter so wild, so remote, so
unmirthful, that fear was in his heart. It
could not be other than imagination, he said
to himself; for in that lonely place there was
none to wander idly at that season, and none
who, wandering, would laugh there solitary.</p>
<p>It was with an effort that Alan at last determined
to probe the mystery. Stooping, he
moved cautiously into the cavern, and groped
his way along the narrow passage which led,
as he <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'thonght'">thought</ins>, into another larger cave. But
this proved to be one of the innumerable
blind ways which intersect the honeycombed
slopes of the Isle of Caves. To wander far in
these lightless passages would be to track
death. Long ago the piper whom the Prionnsa-Bàn,
the Fair Prince, loved to hear
in his exile—he that was called Rory M'Vurich—penetrated
one of the larger hollows to
seek there for a child that had idly wandered
into the dark. Some of the clansmen, with
the father and mother of the little one, waited
at the entrance to the cave. For a time there
was silence; then, as agreed upon, the sound
of the pipes was heard, to which a man
named Lachlan M'Lachlan replied from the
outer air. The skirl of the pipes within grew<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345">[Pg 345]</a></span>
fainter and fainter. Louder and louder Lachlan
played upon his chanter; deeper and deeper
grew the wild moaning of the drone; but
for all that, fainter and fainter waned the sound
of the pipes of Rory M'Vurich. Generations
have come and gone upon the isle, and
still no man has heard the returning air which
Rory was to play. He may have found the
little child, but he never found his backward
path, and in the gloom of that honeycombed
hill he and the child and the music of
the pipes lapsed into the same stillness.
Remembering this legend, familiar to him
since his boyhood, Alan did not dare to venture
further. At any moment, too, he knew he
might fall into one of the crevices which
opened into the sea-corridors hundreds of feet
below. Ancient rumour had it that there
were mysterious passages from the upper
heights of Ben Einaval which led into the
heart of this perilous maze. But for a time
he lay still, straining every sense. Convinced
at last that the man whom he sought had
evaded all possible quest, he turned to regain
the light. Brief way as he had gone, this
was no easy thing to do. For a few moments,
indeed, Alan lost his self-possession when he
found a uniform dusk about him, and could
not discern which of the several branching<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346">[Pg 346]</a></span>
narrow corridors was that by which he had
come. But following the greener light,
he reached the cave, and soon, with a sigh
of relief, was upon the sun-sweet warm earth
again.</p>
<p>How more than ever beautiful the world
seemed! how sweet to the eyes were upland
and cliff, the wide stretch of ocean, the flying
birds, the sheep grazing on the scanty pastures,
and, above all, the homely blue smoke curling
faintly upward from the fisher crofts on the
headland east of Aonaig!</p>
<p>Purposely he retraced his steps by the way
of the glen: he would see the woman Morag
MacNeill again, and insist on some more
explicit word. But when he reached the
burnside once more, the woman was not there.
Possibly she had seen him coming, and guessed
his purpose; half he surmised this, for the
peats in the hearth were brightly aglow, and
on the hob beside them the boiling water
hissed in a great iron pot wherein were
potatoes. In vain he sought, in vain called.
Impatient, he walked around the bothie and
into the little byre beyond. The place was
deserted. This, small matter as it was, added
to his disquietude. Resolved to sift the
mystery, he walked swiftly down the slope.
By the old shealing of Cnoc-na-Monie, now<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_347" id="Page_347">[Pg 347]</a></span>
forsaken, his heart leaped at sight of Ian coming
to meet him.</p>
<p>When they met, Alan put his hands lovingly
on the old man's shoulders, and looked at him
with questioning eyes. He found rest and hope
in those deep pools of quiet light, whence the
faithful love rose comfortingly to meet his own
yearning gaze.</p>
<p>"What is it, Alan-mo-ghray; what is the
trouble that is upon you?"</p>
<p>"It is a trouble, Ian, but one of which I can
speak little, for it is little I know."</p>
<p>"Now, now, for sure you must tell me what
it is."</p>
<p>"I have seen a man here <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'npon'">upon</ins> Rona whom
I have not seen or met before, and it is one
whose face is known to me, and whose voice
too, and one whom I would not meet again."</p>
<p>"Did he give you no name?"</p>
<p>"None."</p>
<p>"Where did he come from? Where did he
go to?"</p>
<p>"He came out of the shadow, and into the
shadow he went."</p>
<p>Ian looked steadfastly at Alan, his wistful
gaze searching deep into his unquiet eyes, and
thence from feature to feature of the face which
had become strangely worn of late.</p>
<p>But he questioned no further.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_348" id="Page_348">[Pg 348]</a></span></p>
<p>"I, too, Alan MacAilean, have heard a
strange thing to-day. You know old Marsail
Macrae? She is ill now with a slow fever,
and she thinks that the shadow which she
saw lying upon her hearth last Sabbath,
when nothing was there to cause any
shadow, was her own death, come for her,
and now waiting there. I spoke to the old
woman, but she would not have peace, and
her eyes looked at me.</p>
<p>"'What will it be now, Marsail?' I asked.</p>
<p>"'Ay, ay, for sure,' she said, 'it was I who
saw you first.'</p>
<p>"'Saw me first, Marsail?'</p>
<p>"'Ay, you and Alan MacAilean.'</p>
<p>"'When and where was this sight upon
you?'</p>
<p>"'It was one month before you and he came
to Rona.'</p>
<p>"I asked the poor old woman to be telling
me her meaning. At first I could make little
of what was said, for she muttered low, and
moved her head this way and that, and moaned
like a stricken ewe. But on my taking her
hand, she looked at me again, and then told
me this thing—</p>
<p>"'On the seventh day of the month before
you came—and by the same token it was on
the seventh day of the month following that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_349" id="Page_349">[Pg 349]</a></span>
you and Alan McAilean came to Caisteal-Rhona—I
was upon the shore at Aonaig,
listening to the crying of the wind against the
great cliff of Biola-creag. With me were
Ruaridh Macrae and Neil MacNeill, Morag
MacNeill, and her sister Elsa; and we were
singing the hymn for those who were out on
the wild sea that was roaring white against
the cliffs of Berneray, for some of our people
were there, and we feared for them. Sometimes
one sang, and sometimes another.
And sure, it is remembering I am, how,
when I had called out with my old wailing
voice—</p>
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">"'Bi 'eadh an Tri-aon leinn, a la's a dh-oidche;<br /></span>
<span class="i0">'S air chul nan tonn, A Mhoire ghradhach!</span>
</div><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">(Be the Three-in-One with us day and night;<br /></span>
<span class="i0">And on the crested wave, O Mary Beloved!)</span>
</div></div>
<p>"'Now when I had just sung this, and we
were all listening to the sound of it caught by
the wind and blown up against the black face
of Biola-creag, I saw a boat come sailing into
the haven. I called out to those about me, but
they looked at me with white faces, for no boat
was there, and it was a rough, wild sea it was
in that haven.</p>
<p>"'And in that boat I saw three people sitting;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_350" id="Page_350">[Pg 350]</a></span>
and one was you, Ian MacIain, and one was a
man who had his face in shadow, and his eyes
looked into the shadow at his feet. I saw you
clear, and told those about me what I saw.'
And Seumas MacNeill, him that is dead now,
and brother to Neil here at Aonaig, he said to
me, "Who was that whom you saw walking in
the dusk the night before last?"—"Ailean
MacAlasdair Carmichael," answered one at
that. Seumas muttered, looking at those,
about him, "Mark what I say, for it is a
true thing—that Ailean Carmichael of Rona
is dead now, because Marsail saw him walking
in the dusk when he was not upon the
island; and now, you Neil, and you Rory,
and all of you, will be for thinking with me
that one of the men in the boat whom Marsail
sees now will be the son of him who has
changed."</p>
<p>"Well, well, it is a true thing that we each
of us thought that thought, but when the days
went and nothing more came of it, the memory
of the seeing went too. Then there came
the day when the coble of Aulay MacAulay
came out of Borosay into Caisteal-Rhona
haven. Glad we were to see your face again,
Ian McIain, and to hear the sob of joy coming
out of the heart of Giorsal your sister;
but when you and Alan MacAilean came<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_351" id="Page_351">[Pg 351]</a></span>
on shore, it was my voice that then went from
mouth to mouth, for I whispered to Morag
MacNeill who was next me that you were the
men I had seen in the boat.'</p>
<p>"Well, after that," Ian added, with a grave
smile, "I spoke gently to old Marsail, and told
her that there was no evil in that seeing, and
that for sure it was nothing at all, at all, to see
two people in a boat, and nothing coming of
that, save happiness for those two, and glad
content to be here.</p>
<p>"Marsail looked at me with big eyes.</p>
<p>"But when I asked her what she meant by
that, she would say no more. No asking of
mine would bring the word to her lips, only
she shook her head and kept her gaze from
my face. Then, seeing that it was useless, I
said to her—</p>
<p>"'Marsail, tell me this: Was this sight of
yours the sole thing that made the people
here on Rona look askance at Alan MacAilean?'</p>
<p>"For a time she stared at me with dim eyes,
then suddenly she spoke—</p>
<p>"'It is not all.'</p>
<p>"'Then what more is there, Marsail
Macrae?'</p>
<p>"'That is not for the saying. I have no
more to say. Let you, or Alan MacAilean,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_352" id="Page_352">[Pg 352]</a></span>
go elsewhere. That which is to be, will be.
To each his own end.'</p>
<p>"'Then be telling me this now at least,' I
asked: 'is there danger for him or me in this
island?'</p>
<p>"But the poor old woman would say no
more, and then I saw a swoon was on her."</p>
<p>After this, Alan and Ian walked slowly home
together, both silent, and each revolving in his
mind as in a dim dusk that mystery which,
vague and unreal at first, had now become a
living presence, and haunted them by day and
night.</p>
<h3><br />IV</h3>
<p>"In the shadow of pain, one may hear the
footsteps of joy." So runs a proverb of old.</p>
<p>It was a true saying for Alan. That night
he lay down in pain, his heart heavy with the
weight of a mysterious burden. On the morrow
he woke blithely to a new day—a day of
absolute beauty. The whole wide wilderness
of ocean was of living azure, aflame with
gold and silver. Around the promontories of
the isles the brown-sailed fishing-boats of
Barra and Berneray, of Borosay and Seila,
moved blithely hither and thither. Everywhere<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_353" id="Page_353">[Pg 353]</a></span>
the rhythm of life pulsed swift and
strong. The first sound which had awakened
Alan was of a loud singing of fishermen who
were putting out from Aonaig. The coming
of a great shoal of mackerel had been
signalled, and every man and woman of
the near isles was alert for the take. The
watchers had known it by the swift congregation
of birds, particularly the gannets and
skuas. And as the men pulled at the oars, or
hoisted the brown sails, they sang a snatch of
an old-world tune, still chanted at the first
coming of the birds when spring-tide is on the
flow again—</p>
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">"Bui' cheas dha 'n Ti thaine na Gugachan<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Thaine's na h-Eoin-Mhora cuideriu,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Cailin dugh ciaru bo's a chro!<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Bo dhonn! bo dhonn! bo dhonn bheadarrach!<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Bo dhonn a ruin a bhlitheadh am baine dhuit<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Ho ro! mo gheallag! ni gu rodagach!<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Cailin dugh ciaru bo's a chro—<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Na h-eoin air tighinn! cluinneam an ceol!"</span>
</div><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">(Thanks to the Being, the Gannets have come,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Yes! and the Great Auks along with them.<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Dark-haired girl!—a cow in the fold!<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Brown cow! brown cow! brown cow, beloved ho!<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Brown cow! my love! the milker of milk to thee!<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Ho ro! my fair-skinned girl—a cow, in the fold,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">And the birds have come!—glad sight, I see!)</span>
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_354" id="Page_354">[Pg 354]</a></span></div></div>
<p>Eager to be of help, Ian put off in his boat,
and was soon among the fishermen, who in
their new excitement were forgetful of all
else than that the mackerel were come, and
that every moment was precious. For the
first time Ian found himself no unwelcome
comrade. Was it, he wondered, because that,
there upon the sea, whatever of shadow
dwelled about him, or rather about Alan
MacAilean, on the land, was no longer
visible.</p>
<p>All through that golden noon he and the
others worked hard. From isle to isle went
the chorus of the splashing oars and splashing
nets; of the splashing of the fish and the
splashing of gannets and gulls; of the splashing
of the tide leaping blithely against the
sun-dazzle, and the illimitable rippling splash
moving out of the west;—all this blent with
the loud, joyous cries, the laughter, and the
hoarse shouts of the men of Barra and the
adjacent islands. It was close upon dusk before
the Rona boats put into the haven of
Aonaig again; and by that time none was
blither than Ian MacIain, who in that day
of happy toil had lost all the gloom and
apprehension of the day before, and now returned
to Caisteal-Rhona with lighter heart
than he had known for long.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_355" id="Page_355">[Pg 355]</a></span></p>
<p>When, however, he got there, there was no
sign of Alan. He had gone, said Giorsal, he
had gone out in the smaller boat midway
in the afternoon, and had sailed around to
Aoidhu, the great scaur which ran out beyond
the precipices at the south-west of
Rona.</p>
<p>This Alan often did, and of late more and
more often. Ever since he had come to the
Hebrid Isles his love of the sea had deepened
and had grown into a passion for its mystery
and beauty. Of late, too, something impelled
to a more frequent isolation, a deep longing
to be where no eye could see and no ear
hearken.</p>
<p>So at first Ian was in no way alarmed.
But when the sun had set, and over the faint
blue film of the Isle of Tiree the moon had
risen, and still no sign of Alan, he became
restless and uneasy. Giorsal begged him in
vain to eat of the supper she had prepared.
Idly he moved to and fro along the rocky
ledge, or down by the pebbly shore, or across
the green <ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both 'airidh' and 'àiridh' were used in this text. This was retained."><i>àiridh</i></ins>, eager for a glimpse of him
whom he loved so well.</p>
<p>At last, unable longer to endure a growing
anxiety, he put out in his boat, and sailed
swiftly before the slight easterly breeze which
had prevailed since moonrise. So far as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_356" id="Page_356">[Pg 356]</a></span>
Aoidhu, all the way from Aonaig, there was
not a haven anywhere, nor even one of the
sea caverns which honeycombed the isle
beyond the headland. A glance, therefore,
showed him that Alan had not yet come back
that way. It was possible, though unlikely,
that he had sailed right round Rona; unlikely,
because in the narrow straits to the north, between
Rona and the scattered islets known
as the Innsemhara, strong currents prevailed,
and particularly at the full of the tide, when
they swept north-eastward dark and swift as
a mill-race.</p>
<p>Once the headland was passed and the
sheer precipitous westward cliffs loomed
black out of the sea, he became more and
more uneasy. As yet, there was no danger;
but he saw that a swell was moving out of
the west; and whenever the wind blew that
way, the sea-arcades were filled with a lifting,
perilous wave. Later, escape might be
difficult, and often impossible. Out of the
score or more great passages which opened between
Aoidhu and Ardgorm, it was difficult
to know into which to chance the search of
Alan. Together they had examined all of
them. Some twisted but slightly; others
wound sinuously till the green, serpentine
alleys, flanked by basalt walls hundreds of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_357" id="Page_357">[Pg 357]</a></span>
feet high, lost themselves in an indistinguishable
maze.</p>
<p>But that which was safest, and wherein a
boat could most easily make its way against
wind or tide, was the huge, cavernous passage
known locally as the Uaimh-nan-roin, the Cave
of the Seals.</p>
<p>For this opening Ian steered his boat. Soon
he was within the wide corridor. Like the
great cave at Staffa, it was wrought as an
aisle in some natural cathedral; the rocks, too,
were columnar, and rose in flawless symmetry,
as though graven by the hand of man. At the
far end of this gigantic aisle, there diverges
a long, narrow arcade, filled by day with
the green shine of the water, and by night,
when the moon is up, with a pale froth of
light. It is one of the few where there are
open gateways for the sea and the wandering
light, and by its spherical shape almost the
only safe passage in a season of heavy wind.
Half-way along this arched arcade a corridor
leads to a round cup-like cavern, midway in
which stands a huge mass of black basalt,
in shape suggestive of a titanic altar. Thus it
must have impressed the imagination of the
islanders of old; for by them, even in a
remote day, it was called Teampull-Mara, the
Temple of the Sea. Owing to the narrowness<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_358" id="Page_358">[Pg 358]</a></span>
of the passage, and to the smooth, unbroken
walls which rise sheer from the green depths
into an invisible darkness, the Strait of the
Temple is not one wherein to linger long, save
in a time of calm.</p>
<p>Instinctively, however, Ian quietly headed
his boat along this narrow way. When,
silently, he emerged from the arcade, he could
just discern the mass of basalt at the far
end of the cavern. But there, seated in
his boat, was Alan, apparently idly adrift,
for one oar floated in the water alongside,
and the other swung listlessly from the
tholes.</p>
<p>His heart had a suffocating grip as he saw
him whom he had come to seek. Why that
absolute stillness, that strange, listless indifference?
For a dreadful moment he feared
death had indeed come to him in that lonely
place where, as an ancient legend had it, a
woman of old time had perished, and ever
since had wrought death upon any who came
thither solitary and unhappy.</p>
<p>But at the striking of the shaft of his oar
against a ledge, Alan moved, and looked at
him with startled eyes. Half rising from
where he crouched in the stern, he called to
him in a voice that had in it something
strangely unfamiliar.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_359" id="Page_359">[Pg 359]</a></span></p>
<p>"I will not hear!" he cried. "I will not
hear! Leave me! Leave me!"</p>
<p>Fearing that the desolation of the place had
wrought upon his mind, Ian swiftly moved
toward him, and the next moment his boat
glided alongside. Stepping from the one to
the other, he kneeled beside him.</p>
<p>"<i>Ailean mo caraid, Ailean-aghray</i>, what is
it? What gives you dread? There is no
harm here. All is well. Look! See, it is I,
Ian—old Ian MacIain! Listen, <i>mo ghaoil</i>;
do you not know me—do you not know
who I am? It is I, Ian; Ian who loves
you!"</p>
<p>Even in that obscure light he could clearly
discern the pale face, and his heart smote him
as he saw Alan's eyes turn upon him with a
glance wild and mournful. Had he indeed
succumbed to the sea madness which ever
and again strikes into a terrible melancholy
one here and there among those who dwell
in the remote isles? But even as he looked,
he noted another expression come into the
wild strained eyes; and almost before he realised
what had happened, Alan was on his feet
and pointing with rigid arm.</p>
<p>For there, in that nigh unreachable and for
ever unvisited solitude, was the figure of a
man. He stood on the summit of the huge<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_360" id="Page_360">[Pg 360]</a></span>
basalt altar, and appeared to have sprung
from out the rock, or, himself a shadowy
presence, to have grown out of the obscure
unrealities of the darkness. Ian stared, fascinated,
speechless.</p>
<p>Then with a spring he was on the ledge.
Swift and sure as a wild cat, he scaled the
huge mass of the altar.</p>
<p>Nothing; no one! There was not a trace
of any human being. Not a bird, not a bat;
nothing. Moreover, even in that slowly
blackening darkness, he could see that there
was no direct connection between the summit
or side with the blank, precipitous wall of basalt
beyond. Overhead there was, so far as
he could discern, a vault. No human being
could have descended through that perilous
gulf.</p>
<p>Was the island haunted? he wondered, as
slowly he made his way back to the boat. Or
had he been startled by some wild fantasy,
and imagined a likeness where none had
been? Perhaps even he had not really seen
any one. He had heard of such things. The
nerves can soon chase the mind into the
shadow wherein it loses itself.</p>
<p>Or was Alan the vain dreamer? That, indeed,
might well be. Mayhap he had heard
some fantastic tale from Morag MacNeill, or<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_361" id="Page_361">[Pg 361]</a></span>
from old Marsail Macrae; the islanders had
<i>sgeul</i> after <i>sgeul</i> of a wild strangeness.</p>
<p>In silence he guided the boats back into the
outer arcade, where a faint sheen of moonlight
glistened on the water. Thence, in a few
minutes, he oared that wherein he and Alan
sat, with the other fastened astern, into the
open.</p>
<p>When the moonshine lay full on Alan's face,
Ian saw that he was thinking neither of himself
nor of where he was. His eyes were heavy
with dream.</p>
<p>What wind there was blew against their
course, so Ian rowed unceasingly. In silence
they passed once again the headland of Aoidhu;
in silence they drifted past a single light
gleaming in a croft near Aonaig—a red eye
staring out into the shadow of the sea, from
the room where the woman Marsail lay
dying; and in silence their keels grided on the
patch of shingle in Caisteal-Rhona haven.</p>
<p><br />For days thereafter Alan haunted that rocky,
cavernous wilderness where he had seen the
Herdsman.</p>
<p>It was in vain he had sought everywhere
for some tidings of this mysterious dweller
in those upland solitudes. At times he believed
that there was indeed some one upon<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_362" id="Page_362">[Pg 362]</a></span>
the island of whom, for inexplicable reasons,
none there would speak; but at last he came
to the conviction that what he had seen was
an apparition, projected by the fantasy of
overwrought nerves. Even from the woman
Morag MacNeill, to whom he had gone with
a frank appeal that won its way to her heart,
he learned no more than that an old legend, of
which she did not care to speak, was in some
way associated with his own coming to Rona.</p>
<p>Ian, too, never once alluded to the
mysterious incident of the green arcades
which had so deeply impressed them both:
never after Alan had told him that he had seen
a vision.</p>
<p>But as the days passed, and as no word came
to either of any unknown person who was on
the island, and as Alan, for all his patient
wandering and furtive quest, both among the
upland caves and in the green arcades, found
absolutely no traces of him whom he sought,
the belief that he had been duped by his
imagination deepened almost to conviction.</p>
<p>As for Ian, he, unlike Alan, became more
and more convinced that what he had seen
was indeed no apparition. Whatever lingering
doubt he had was dissipated on the eve of
the night when old Marsail Macrae died.
It was dusk when word came to Caisteal-Rhona<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_363" id="Page_363">[Pg 363]</a></span>
that Marsail felt the cold wind on the
soles of her feet. Ian went to her at once,
and it was in the dark hour which followed
that he heard once more, and more fully, the
strange story which, like a poisonous weed,
had taken root in the minds of the islanders.
Already from Marsail he had heard of the
Prophet, though, strangely enough, he had
never breathed word of this to Alan, not
even when, after the startling episode of the
apparition in the Teampull-Mara, he had, as
he believed, seen the Prophet himself. But
there in the darkness of the low, turfed
cottage, with no light in the room save the
dull red gloom from the heart of the smoored
peats, Marsail, in the attenuated, remote
voice of those who have already entered into
the vale of the shadow, told him this thing, in
the homelier Gaelic—</p>
<p>"Yes, Ian mac Iain-Bàn, I will be telling
you this thing before I change. You are for
knowing, sure, that long ago Uilleam, brother
of him who was father to the lad up at the
castle yonder, had a son? Yes, you know
that, you say, and also that he was called
Donnacha Bàn? No, mo-caraid, that is not a
true thing that you have heard, that Donnacha
Bàn went under the waves years ago. He
was the seventh son, an' was born under the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_364" id="Page_364">[Pg 364]</a></span>
full moon; 'tis Himself will be knowing
whether that was for or against him. Of
these seven none lived beyond childhood
except the two youngest, Kenneth an' Donnacha.
Kenneth was always frail as a February
flower, but he lived to be a man. He an' his
brother never spoke, for a feud was between
them, not only because that each was unlike
the other, an' the younger hated the older
because through him he was the penniless one,
but most because both loved the same woman.
I am not for telling you the whole story now,
for the breath in my body will soon blow out in
the draught that is coming upon me; but this
I will say to you: darker and darker grew the
gloom between these brothers. When Giorsal
Macdonald gave her love to Kenneth, Donnacha
disappeared for a time. Then, one
day, he came back to Borosay, an' smiled
quietly with his cold eyes when they wondered
at his coming again. Now, too, it was
noticed that he no longer had an ill-will upon
his brother, but spoke smoothly with him an'
loved to be in his company. But to this day
no one knows for sure what happened. For
there was a gloaming when Donnacha Bàn
came back alone in his sailing-boat. He an'
Kenneth had sailed forth, he said, to shoot
seals in the sea-arcades to the west of Rona,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_365" id="Page_365">[Pg 365]</a></span>
but in these dark and lonely passages they had
missed each other. At last he had heard
Kenneth's voice calling for help, but when
he had got to the place it was too late, for his
brother had been seized with the cramps, an'
had sunk deep into the fathomless water.
There is no getting a body again that sinks in
these sea-galleries. The crabs know that.</p>
<p>"Well, this and much more was what
Donnacha Bàn told to his people. None
believed him; but what could any do? There
was no proof; none had ever seen them enter
the sea-caves together. Not that Donnacha
Bàn sought in any way to keep back those who
would fain know more. Not so; he strove to
help to find the body. Nevertheless, none
believed; an' Giorsal nic Dugall Mòr least of
all. The blight of that sorrow went to her
heart. She had death soon, poor thing! but
before the cold greyness was upon her she
told her father, an' the minister that was there,
that she knew Donnacha Bàn had murdered
his brother. One might be saying these
were the wild words of a woman; but, for
sure, no one said that thing upon Borosay or
Rona, or any of these isles. When all was
done, the minister told what he knew, an'
what he thought, to the Lord of the South
Isles, and asked what was to be put upon<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_366" id="Page_366">[Pg 366]</a></span>
Donnacha Bàn. 'Exile for ever,' said the
chief, 'or if he stays here, the doom of silence.
Let no man or woman speak to him or give
him food or drink, or give him shelter, or let
his shadow cross his or hers.'</p>
<p>"When this thing was told to Donnacha
Bàn Carmichael, he laughed at first; but as
day after day slid over the rocks where all
days fall, he laughed no more. Soon he saw
that the chief's word was no empty word;
an' yet would not go away from his own place.
He could not stay upon Borosay, for his
father cursed him; an' no man can stay upon
the island where a father's curse moves
this way an' that, for ever seeing him. Then,
some say a madness came upon him, and
others that he took wildness to be his way,
and others that God put upon him the
shadow of loneliness, so that he might meet
sorrow there and repent. Howsoever that
may be, Donnacha Bàn came to Rona, an'
by the same token, it was the year of the great
blight, when the potatoes and the corn came
to naught, an' when the fish in the sea swam
away from the isles. In the autumn of that
year there was not a soul left on Rona
except Giorsal an' the old man Ian, her
father, who had guard of Caisteal-Rhona for
him who was absent. When, once more,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_367" id="Page_367">[Pg 367]</a></span>
years after, smoke rose from the crofts, the
saying spread that Donnacha Bàn, the
murderer, had made his home among the
caves of the upper part of the isle. None
knew how this saying rose, for he was seen
of none. The last man who saw him—an' that
was a year later—was old Padruig M'Vurich
the shepherd. Padruig said that, as he was
driving his ewes across the north slope of Ben
Einaval in the gloaming, he came upon a silent
figure seated upon a rock, with his chin in
his hands, an' his elbows on his knees—with
the great, sad eyes of him staring at the
moon that was lifting itself out of the sea.
Padruig did not know who the man was.
The shepherd had few wits, poor man!
and he had known, or remembered, little
about the story of Donnacha Bàn Carmichael;
so when he spoke to the man, it was as
to a stranger. The man looked at him and
said—</p>
<p>"'You are Padruig M'Vurich, the shepherd.'</p>
<p>"At that a trembling was upon old Padruig,
who had the wonder that this stranger should
know who and what he was.</p>
<p>"'And who will you be, and forgive the
saying?' he asked.</p>
<p>"'<i>Am Fàidh</i>—the Prophet,' the man said.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_368" id="Page_368">[Pg 368]</a></span></p>
<p>"'And what prophet will you be, and what
is your prophecy?' asked Padruig.</p>
<p>"'I am here because I wait for what is to be,
and that will be the coming of the Woman who
is the Daughter of God.'</p>
<p>"And with that the man said no more, an'
the old shepherd went down through the
gloaming, an', heavy with the thoughts that
troubled him, followed his ewes down into
Aonaig. But after that neither he nor any
other saw or heard tell of the shadowy
stranger; so that all upon Rona felt sure that
Padruig had beheld no more than a vision.
There were some who thought that he had
seen the ghost of the outlaw Donnacha Bàn;
an' mayhap one or two who wondered if the
stranger that had said he was a prophet was
not Donnacha Bàn himself, with a madness
come upon him; but at last these sayings
went out to sea upon the wind, an' men forgot.
But, an' it was months and months afterwards,
an' three days before his own death,
old Padruig M'Vurich was sitting in the
sunset on the rocky ledge in front of his
brother's croft, where then he was staying,
when he heard a strange crying of seals. He
thought little of that; only, when he looked
closer, he saw, in the hollow of the wave hard
by that ledge, a drifting body.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_369" id="Page_369">[Pg 369]</a></span></p>
<p>"'<i>Am Fàidh—Am Fàidh!</i>' he cried; 'the
Prophet, the Prophet!'</p>
<p>"At that his brother an' his brother's wife
ran to see; but it was nothing that they saw.
'It would be a seal,' said Pòl M'Vurich; but
at that Padruig had shook his head, an' said
no for sure, he had seen the face of the dead
man, an' it was of him whom he had met on
the hillside, an' that had said he was the
Prophet who was waiting there for the second
coming of God.</p>
<p>"And that is how there came about the
echo of the thought that Donnacha Bàn had
at last, after his madness, gone under the
green wave and was dead. For all that, in
the months which followed, more than one
man said he had seen a figure high up on the
hill. The old wisdom says that when God
comes again, or the prophet who will come
before, it will be as a herdsman on a lonely
isle. More than one of the old people on
Rona and Borosay remembered that <i>sgeul</i> out
of the <i>Seanachas</i> that the tale-tellers knew.
There were some who said that Donnacha
Bàn had never been drowned at all, an' that
he was this Prophet, this Herdsman. Others
would not have that saying at all, but believed
that the wraith was indeed Am Buachaill <ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both Buachaill 'Ban' and 'Bàn' were used in this text. This was retained.">Ban</ins>,
the Fair-haired Shepherd, who had come<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_370" id="Page_370">[Pg 370]</a></span>
again to redeem the people out of their
sorrow. There were even those who said
that the Herdsman who haunted Rona was no
other than Kenneth Carmichael himself, who
had not died but had had the mind-dark there
in the sea-caves where he had been lost, an'
there had come to the knowledge of secret
things, and so was at last Am Fàidh
Chriosd."</p>
<p><br />A great weakness came upon the old
woman when she had spoken thus far. Ian
feared that she would have breath for no
further word; but after a thin gasping, and
a listless fluttering of weak hands upon the
coverlet, whereon her trembling fingers
plucked aimlessly at the invisible blossoms of
death, she opened her eyes once more, and
stared in a dim questioning at him who sat by
her bedside.</p>
<p>"Tell me," whispered Ian, "tell me Marsail,
what thought it is that is in your own
mind?"</p>
<p>But already the old woman had begun to
wander.</p>
<p>"For sure, for sure," she muttered, "<i>Am
Fàidh ... Am Fàidh</i> ... an' a child will be
born ... the Queen of Heaven, an' ... that
will be the voice of Domhuill, my husband, I<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_371" id="Page_371">[Pg 371]</a></span>
am hearing ... an' dark it is, an' the tide
comin' in ... an'——"</p>
<p>Then, sure, the tide came in, and if in that
darkness old Marsail Macrae heard any voice
at all, it was that of Domhuill who years
agone had sunk into the wild seas off the head
of Barra.</p>
<p>An hour later Alan walked slowly under the
cloudy night. All he had heard from Ian
came back to him with a strange familiarity.
Something of this, at least, he had known before.
Some hints of this mysterious Herdsman
had reached his ears. In some inexplicable
way his real or imaginary presence there
upon Rona seemed a pre-ordained thing for
him.</p>
<p>He knew that the wild imaginings of the
islanders had woven the legend of the
Prophet, or of his mysterious message, out
of the loom of the deep longing whereon
is woven that larger tapestry, the shadow-thridden
life of the island Gael. Laughter
and tears, ordinary hopes and pleasures, and
even joy itself, and bright gaiety, and the
swift, spontaneous imaginations of susceptible
natures—all this, of course, is to be found
with the island Gael as with his fellows elsewhere.
But every here and there are some
who have in their minds the inheritance from<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_372" id="Page_372">[Pg 372]</a></span>
the dim past of their race, and are oppressed
as no other people are oppressed by the gloom
of a strife between spiritual emotion and
material facts. It is the brains of dreamers
such as these which clear the mental life of the
community; and it is in these brains are the
mysterious looms which weave the tragic and
sorrowful tapestries of Celtic thought. It
were a madness to suppose that life in the isles
consists of nothing but sadness and melancholy.
It is not so, or need not be so, for the Gael is
a creature of shadow and shine. But whatever
the people is, the brain of the Gael hears
a music that is sadder than any music there
is, and has for its cloudy sky a gloom that
shall not go; for the end is near, and upon
the westernmost shores of these remote isles
the voice of Celtic sorrow may be heard
crying, "<i>Cha till, cha till, cha till mi tuille</i>":
"I will return, I will return, I will return no
more."</p>
<p>Alan knew all this well; and yet he too
dreamed his dream—that, even yet, there
might be redemption for the people. He did
not share the wild hope which some of the
older islanders held, that Christ Himself shall
come again to redeem an oppressed race; but
might not another saviour arise, another redeeming
spirit come into the world? And if<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_373" id="Page_373">[Pg 373]</a></span>
so, might not that child of joy be born out of
suffering and sorrow and crime; and if so,
might not the Herdsman be indeed a prophet,
the Prophet of the Woman in whom God
should come anew as foretold?</p>
<p>With startled eyes he crossed the thyme-set
ledge whereon stood Caisteal-Rhona. Was it,
after all, a message he had received, and was
that which had appeared to him in that lonely
cavern of the sea but a phantom of his own
destiny? Was he himself, Alan Carmichael,
indeed <i>Am Fàidh</i>, the predestined Prophet of
the isles?</p>
<h3><br />V</h3>
<p>Ever since the night of Marsail's death, Ian
had noticed that Alan no longer doubted, but
that in some way a special message had come
to him, a special revelation. On the other hand,
he had himself swung further into his conviction
that the vision he had seen in the cavern was,
in truth, that of a living man. On Borosay, he
knew, the fishermen believed that the <i>aonaran
nan creag</i>, the recluse of the rocks, as commonly
they spoke of him, was no other than Donnacha
Bàn Carmichael, survived there through these
many years, and long since mad with his
loneliness and because of the burden of his
crime.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_374" id="Page_374">[Pg 374]</a></span></p>
<p>But by this time the islanders had come to
see that Alan MacAilean was certainly not
Donnacha Bàn. Even the startling likeness
no longer betrayed them in this way. The
ministers and the priests on Berneray and
Barra scoffed at the whole story, and everywhere
discouraged the idea that Donnacha
Bàn could still be among the living. But for
the common belief that to encounter the
Herdsman, whether the lost soul of Donnacha
Bàn or indeed the strange phantom of the hills
of which the old legends spoke, was to meet
inevitable disaster, the islanders might have
been persuaded to make such a search among
the caves of Rona as would almost certainly
have revealed the presence of any who dwelt
therein.</p>
<p>But as summer lapsed into autumn, and
autumn itself through its golden silences waned
into the shadow of the equinox, a strange,
brooding serenity came upon Alan. Ian himself
now doubted his own vision of the mysterious
Herdsman—if he indeed existed at all except
in the imaginations of those who spoke of
him either as the Buachaill <ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both Buachaill 'Ban' and 'Bàn' were used in this text. This was retained.">Bàn</ins>, or as the
<i>aonaran nan creag</i>. If a real man, Ian
believed that at last he had passed away.
None saw the Herdsman now; and even
Morag MacNeill, who had often on moonlight<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_375" id="Page_375">[Pg 375]</a></span>
nights been startled by the sound of a voice
chanting among the upper solitudes, admitted
that she now heard nothing unusual.</p>
<p>St. Martin's summer came at last, and with
it all that wonderful, dreamlike beauty which
bathes the isles in a flood of golden light, and
draws over sea and land a veil of deeper
mystery.</p>
<p>One late afternoon, Ian, returning to Caisteal-Rhona
after an unexplained absence of several
hours, found Alan sitting at a table. Spread
before him were the sheets of one of the
strange old Gaelic tales which he had
ardently begun to translate. Alan lifted and
slowly read the page or paraphrase which he
had just laid down. It was after the homelier
Gaelic of the <i>Eachdaireachd Challum mhic
Cruimein</i>.</p>
<p>"And when that king had come to the
island, he lived there in the shadow of men's
eyes; for none saw him by day or by night,
and none knew whence he came or whither
he fared; for his feet were shod with silence,
and his way with dusk. But men knew that he
was there, and all feared him. Months, even
years, tramped one on the heels of the other,
and perhaps the king gave no sign, but one day
he would give a sign; and that sign was a
laughing that was heard somewhere, upon the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_376" id="Page_376">[Pg 376]</a></span>
lonely hills, or on the lonely wave, or in the
heart of him who heard. And whenever the
king laughed, he who heard would fare ere
long from his fellows to join that king in the
shadow. But sometimes the king laughed only
because of vain hopes and wild imaginings, for
upon these he lives as well as upon the strange
savours of mortality."</p>
<p>That night Alan awakened Ian suddenly,
and taking him by the hand made him promise
to go with him on the morrow to the Teampull-Mara.</p>
<p>In vain Ian questioned him as to why he
asked this thing. All Alan would say was
that he must go there once again, and with
him, for he believed that a spirit out of
heaven had come to reveal to him a wonder.
Distressed by what he knew to be a madness,
and fearful that it might prove to be no
passing fantasy, Ian would fain have persuaded
him against this intention. Even as he spoke,
however, he realised that it might be better
to accede to his wishes, and, above all, to
be there with him, so that it might not be
one only who heard or saw the expected
revelation.</p>
<p>And it was a strange faring indeed, that
which occurred on the morrow. At noon,
when the tide was an hour turned in the ebb,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_377" id="Page_377">[Pg 377]</a></span>
they sailed westward from Caisteal-Rhona.
It was in silence they made that strange
journey together; for, while Ian steered, Alan
lay down in the hollow of the boat, with his
head against the old man's knees, and slept,
or at least lay still with his eyes closed.</p>
<p>When at last they passed the headland and
entered the first of the sea-arcades, Alan rose
and sat beside him. Hauling down the now
useless <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'sale'">sail</ins>, Ian took an oar and, standing at
the prow, urged the boat inward along the
narrow corridor which led to the huge sea-cave
of the Altar.</p>
<p>In the deep gloom—for even on that day of
golden light and beauty the green air of the
sea-cave was heavy with shadow—there was
a deathly chill. What dull light there was
came from the sheen of the green water which
lay motionless along the black basaltic ledges.
When at last the base of the Altar was reached,
Ian secured the boat by a rope passed around
a projecting spur, and then seated himself in
the stern beside Alan.</p>
<p>"Tell me, Alan-a-ghaoil, what is this thing
that you are thinking you will hear or see?"</p>
<p>Alan looked at him strangely for a while,
but, though his lips moved, he said nothing.</p>
<p>"Tell me, my heart," Ian urged again,
"who is it you expect to see or hear?"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_378" id="Page_378">[Pg 378]</a></span></p>
<p>"<i>Am Buachaill <ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both Buachaill 'Ban' and 'Bàn' were used in this text. This was retained.">Bàn</ins></i>," Alan answered, "the
Herdsman."</p>
<p>For a moment Ian hesitated. Then, taking
Alan's hand in his and raising it to his lips,
he whispered in his ear—</p>
<p>"There is no Herdsman upon Rona. If a
man was there who lived solitary, the <i>aonaran
nan creag</i> is dead long since. What you have
seen and heard has been a preying upon you of
wild thoughts. Be thinking no more now of
this vision."</p>
<p>"This man," Alan answered quietly, "is
not Donnacha Bàn, but the Prophet of whom
the people speak. He himself has told me this
thing. Yesterday I was here, and he bade
me come again. He spoke out of the shadow
that is about the Altar, though I saw him not.
I asked him if he were Donnacha Bàn, and
he said 'No.' I asked him if he were <i>Am
Fàidh</i>, and he said 'Yes.' I asked him if he
were indeed an immortal spirit and herald
of that which was to be, and he said 'Even
so.'"</p>
<p>For a long while after this no word was
spoken. The chill of that remote place began
to affect <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'Allen'">Alan</ins>, and he shivered slightly at
times. But more he shivered because of the
silence, and because that he who had promised
to be there gave no sign. Sure, he thought, it<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_379" id="Page_379">[Pg 379]</a></span>
could not be all a dream; sure, the Herdsman
would come again.</p>
<p>Then at last, turning to Ian, he said, "We
must come on the morrow, for to-day he is
not here."</p>
<p>"I will do what you ask, Alan-mo-ghaol."</p>
<p>But of a sudden Alan stepped on the black
ledges at the base of the Altar, and slowly
mounted the precipitous rock.</p>
<p>Ian watched him till he became a shadow
in that darkness. His heart leaped when
suddenly he heard a cry fall out of the gloom.</p>
<p>"Alan, Alan!" he cried, and a great fear
was upon him when no answer came; but at
last he heard him clambering slowly down the
perilous slope of that obscure place. When he
reached the ledge Alan stood still regarding
him.</p>
<p>"Why do you not come into the boat?"
Ian asked, terrified because of what he saw in
Alan's eyes.</p>
<p>Alan looked at him with parted lips, his
breath coming and going like that of a caged
bird.</p>
<p>"What is it?" Ian whispered.</p>
<p>"Ian, when I reached the top of the Altar,
and in the dim light that was there, I saw the
dead body of a man lying upon the rock. His
head was lain back so that the gleam from a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_380" id="Page_380">[Pg 380]</a></span>
crevice in the cliff overhead fell upon it. The
man had been dead many hours. He is a man
whose hair has been greyed by years and
sorrow, but the man is he who is of my blood;
he whom I resemble so closely; he that the
fishermen call the hermit of the rocks; he that
is the Herdsman."</p>
<p>Ian stared, with moving lips: then in a
whisper he spoke—</p>
<p>"Would you be for following a herdsman
who could lead you to no fold? This man is
dead, Alan mac Alasdair; and it is well that
you brought me here to-day. That is a good
thing, and for sure God has willed it."</p>
<p>"It is not a man that is dead. It is my soul
that lies there. It is dead. God called me to
be His Prophet, and I hid in dreams. It is the
end." And with that, and death staring out
of his eyes, he entered the boat and sat down
beside Ian.</p>
<p>"Let us go," he said, and that was all.</p>
<p>Slowly Ian oared the boat across the shadowy
gulf of the cave, along the narrow passage, and
into the pale green gloom of the outer cavern,
wherein the sound of the sea made a forlorn
requiem in his ears.</p>
<p>But the short November day was already
passing to its end. All the sea westward was
aflame with gold and crimson light, and in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_381" id="Page_381">[Pg 381]</a></span>
the great dome of the sky a wonderful radiance
lifted above the paleness of the clouds,
whose pinnacled and bastioned heights towered
in the south-west.</p>
<p>A faint wind blew eastwardly. Raising the
sail, Ian made it fast and then sat down beside
Alan. But he, rising, moved along the boat
to the mast, and leaned there with his face
against the setting sun.</p>
<p>Idly they drifted onward. Deep silence lay
between them; deep silence was all about
them, save for the ceaseless, inarticulate
murmur of the sea, the splash of low waves
against the rocks of Rona, and the sigh of
the surf at the base of the basalt precipices.</p>
<p>And this was their homeward sailing on
that day of revelation: Alan, with his back
against the mast, and his lifeless face irradiated
by the light of the setting sun; Ian, steering,
with his face in shadow.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_382" id="Page_382">[Pg 382]</a></span></p>
<div class="blockquot"><br />
<p><i>Love in Shadow has two sacred ministers, Oblivion
and Faith, one to heal, the other to renovate and upbuild.</i>—F. M.</p></div><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_383" id="Page_383">[Pg 383]</a></span></p>
<hr style="width: 65%;" />
<h2>FRAGMENTS FROM "GREEN FIRE"</h2>
<h3>THE BIRDS OF ANGUS <ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both Angus 'Og' and 'Òg' were used in this text. This was retained.">ÒG</ins></h3>
<div class="blockquot"><p>"<i>Then, in the violet forest all a-bourgeon, Eucharis,
said to me: It is Spring</i>."—<span class="smcap">Arthur Rimbaud.</span></p></div>
<p>After the dim purple bloom of a suspended
Spring, a green rhythm ran from larch to
thorn, from lime to sycamore: spread from
meadow to meadow, from copse to copse,
from hedgerow to hedgerow. The blackthorn
had already snowed upon the nettle-garths.
In the obvious nests, among the bare
boughs of ash and beech, the eggs of the
blackbird were blue-green as the sky that
March had bequeathed to April. For days
past, when the breath of the Equinox had
surged out of the west, the missel-thrushes
had bugled from the wind-swayed topmost
branches of the tallest elms. Everywhere the
green rhythm ran.</p>
<p>In every leaf that had uncurled there was
a delicate bloom, that which is upon all things
in the first hours of life. The spires of the
grass were washed in a green, dewy light.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_384" id="Page_384">[Pg 384]</a></span>
Out of the brown earth a myriad living things
thrust tiny green shafts, arrow-heads, bulbs,
spheres, clusters. Along the pregnant soil
keener ears than ours would have heard the
stir of new life, the innumerous whisper of
the bursting seed: and, in the wind itself,
shepherding the shadow-chased sunbeams, the
voice of that vernal gladness which has been
man's clarion since Time began.</p>
<p>Day by day the wind-wings lifted a more
multitudinous whisper from the woodlands.
The deep hyperborean note, from the invisible
ocean of air, was still audible: within the
concourse of bare boughs which wrought
against it, that surging voice could not but
have an echo of its wintry roar. In the sun-havens,
however, along the southerly copses,
in daisied garths of orchard-trees, amid the
flowering currant and guelder and lilac bushes,
in quiet places where the hives were all
a-murmur, the wind already sang its lilt of
Spring. From dawn till noon, from an hour
before <ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both 'sun-down' and 'sundown' were used in this text. This was retained.">sundown</ins> till the breaking foam along
the wild-cherry flushed fugitively because of
the crimson glow out of the west, there was
a ceaseless chittering of birds. The starlings
and the sparrows enjoyed the <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'commume'">commune</ins> of
the homestead; the larks and fieldfares and
green and yellow linnets congregated in the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_385" id="Page_385">[Pg 385]</a></span>
meadows, where, too, the wild bee already
roved. Among the brown ridgy fallows there
was a constant flutter of black, white-gleaming,
and silver-grey wings, where the stalking rooks,
the jerking peewits, and the wary, uncertain
gulls from the neighbouring sea feasted
tirelessly from the teeming earth. Often, too,
the wind-hover, that harbinger of the season
of the young broods, quivered his curved wings
in his arrested flight, while his lance-like gaze
penetrated the whins beneath which a new-born
rabbit crawled, or discerned in the tangle
of a grassy tuft the brown watchful eyes of a
nesting quail.</p>
<p>In the remoter woodlands the three foresters
of April could be heard; the woodpecker
tapping on the gnarled boles of the oaks, the
wild dove calling in low crooning monotones to
his silent mate, the cuckoo tolling his infrequent
peals from skiey belfries built of sun and mist.</p>
<p>In the fields, where the thorns were green
as rivulets of melted snow and the grass had
the bloom of emerald, and the leaves of
docken, clover, cinquefoil, sorrel, and a thousand
plants and flowers, were wave-green,
the ewes lay, idly watching with their
luminous amber eyes the frisking and leaping
of the close-curled, tuft-tailed, woolly-legged
lambs. In corners of the hedgerows, and in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_386" id="Page_386">[Pg 386]</a></span>
hollows in the rolling meadows, the primrose,
the celandine, the buttercup, the dandelion,
and the daffodil spilled little eddies of the
sunflood which overbrimmed them with light.
All day long the rapture of the larks filled the
blue air with vanishing spirals of music, swift
and passionate in the ascent, repetitive and less
piercing in the narrowing downward gyres.
From every whin the poignant monotonous
note of the yellow hammer re-echoed. Each
pastoral hedge was alive with robins, chaffinches,
and the dusky shadows of the wild mice
darting here and there among the greening
boughs.</p>
<p>Whenever this green fire is come upon the
earth, the swift contagion spreads to the human
heart. What the seedlings feel in the trees,
what the blood feels in the brown mould, what
the sap feels in every creature from the newt in
the pool to the nesting bird, so feels the strange
remembering ichor that runs its red tides
through human hearts and brains. Spring has
its subtler magic for us, because of the dim
mysteries of unremembering remembrance and
of the vague radiances of hope. Something
in us sings an ascendant song, and we expect
we know not what: something in us sings a
decrescent song, and we realise vaguely the
stirring of immemorial memories.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_387" id="Page_387">[Pg 387]</a></span></p>
<p>There is none who will admit that Spring is
fairer elsewhere than in his own land. But
there are regions where the season is so
hauntingly beautiful that it would seem as
though Angus <ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both Angus 'Og' and 'Òg' were used in this text. This was retained.">Òg</ins> knew them for his chosen
resting-places in his green journey.</p>
<p>Angus <ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both Angus 'Og' and 'Òg' were used in this text. This was retained.">Òg</ins>, Angus MacGreigne, Angus the
Ever Youthful, the Son of the Sun, a fair god
he indeed, golden-haired and wonderful as
Apollo Chrusokumos. Some say that he is
Love: some, that he is Spring: some, even,
that in him Thanatos, the Hellenic Celt that
was his far-off kin, is reincarnate. But why
seek riddles in flowing water? It may well
be that Angus <ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both Angus 'Og' and 'Òg' were used in this text. This was retained.">Òg</ins> is Love, and Spring, and
Death. The elemental gods are ever triune:
and in the human heart, in whose lost Eden an
ancient tree of knowledge grows, wherefrom
the mind has not yet gathered more than a few
windfalls, it is surely sooth that Death and
Love are oftentimes one and the same, and
that they love to come to us in the apparel of
Spring.</p>
<p>Sure, indeed, Angus <ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both Angus 'Og' and 'Òg' were used in this text. This was retained.">Òg</ins> is a name above
all sweet to lovers, for is he not the god—the
fair Youth of the Tuatha-de-Danann, the
Ancient People, with us still, though for ages
seen of us no more—from the meeting of
whose lips are born white birds, which fly<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_388" id="Page_388">[Pg 388]</a></span>
abroad and nest in lovers' hearts till the moment
come when, on the yearning lips of love,
their invisible wings shall become kisses
again?</p>
<p>Then, too, there is the old legend that Angus
goes to and fro upon the world, a weaver
of rainbows. He follows the Spring, or is its
herald. Often his rainbows are seen in the
heavens: often in the rapt gaze of love. We
have all perceived them in the eyes of children,
and some of us have discerned them in the
hearts of sorrowful women, and in the dim
brains of the old. Ah, for sure, if Angus
<ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both Angus 'Og' and 'Òg' were used in this text. This was retained.">Og</ins> be the lovely Weaver of Hope, he is
deathless comrade of the Spring, and we may
well pray to him to let his green fire move in
our veins; whether he be but the Eternal
Youth of the World, or be also Love, whose
soul is youth; or even though he be likewise
Death himself, Death to whom Love was
wedded long, long ago.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_389" id="Page_389">[Pg 389]</a></span></p>
<h3><br />II</h3>
<p>Alan was a poet, and to dream was his
birthright.... He was ever occupied by
that wonderful past of his race which was to
him a living reality. It was perhaps because
he so keenly perceived the romance of the
present—the romance of the general hour, of
the individual moment—that he turned so
insatiably to the past with its deathless charm,
its haunting appeal.... His mind was as
irresistibly drawn to the Celtic world of the
past as the swallow to the sun-way. In a
word he was not only a poet but a Celtic poet;
and not only a Celtic poet but a dreamer
of the Celtic dream. Perhaps this was because
of the double strain in his veins.
Doubtless, too, it was continuously enhanced
by his intimate knowledge of two of the Celtic
languages, that of the Breton and that of
the Gael. It is language that is the surest
stimulus to the remembering nerves. We have<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_390" id="Page_390">[Pg 390]</a></span>
a memory within memory as layers of skin
underlie the epidermis. With most of us
this anterior remembrance remains dormant
throughout life: but to some are given swift
ancestral recollections. Alan was of these.</p>
<p>With this double key Alan unlocked many
doors. In his brain ran ever that Ossianic
tide which has borne so many <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'mavellous'">marvellous</ins>
argosies through the troubled waters of the
modern mind. Old ballad of his nature isles,
with their haunting Gaelic rhythm of idioms,
their frequent reminiscence of Norse viking
and the Danish summer-sailor were often in
his ears. He had lived with his hero Cuchullin
from the days when the boy shewed his royal
blood at Emain-Macha till that sad hour when
his madness came upon him and he died. He
had fared forth with many a Lifting of the
Sunbeam, and had followed Oisin step by step
on that last melancholy journey when Malvina
led the blind old man along the lonely shores
of Arran. He had watched the <i>crann-tara</i>
flare from glen to glen, and at the bidding of
that fiery cross he had seen the whirling of the
swords, the dusky flight of arrow-rain, and
from the isles, the leaping forth of the war
<i>birlinns</i> to meet the Viking galleys. How
often, too, he had followed trial of Niall of
the nine Hostages and had seen the Irish<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_391" id="Page_391">[Pg 391]</a></span>
Charlemagne ride victor through Saxon
London, or across the Norman plains or with
onward sword direct his army against the
white walls of the Alps!... It was all this
marvellous life of old which wrought upon
Alan's life as by a spell. Often he recalled the
words of a Gaelic <i>Sean</i> he had heard Yann
croon in his soft monotonous voice,—words
which made a light shoreward eddy of the
present and were solemn with the deep-sea
sound of the past, that is with us even as we
speak....</p>
<p>Truly his soul must have lived a thousand
years ago. In him, at least, the old Celtic
brain was <ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both 're-born' and 'reborn' were used in this text. This was retained.">reborn</ins> with a vivid intensity which
none guessed, for Alan himself only vaguely
surmised the extent and depth of this obsession.
In heart and brain that old world lived anew.
Himself a poet, all that was fair and tragically
beautiful was for ever undergoing in his mind
a marvellous transformation—a magical resurrection
rather, wherein what was remote and
bygone, and crowned with oblivious dust,
became alive again with intense and beautiful
life....</p>
<p><br />Deep passion instinctively moves towards
the shadow rather than towards the golden
noons of light. Passion hears what love at<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_392" id="Page_392">[Pg 392]</a></span>
most dreams of; passion sees what love mayhap
dimly discerns in a glass darkly. A million
of our fellows are "in love" at any or
every moment: and for these the shadowy
way is intolerable. But for the few, in whom
love is, the eyes are circumspect against the
dark hour which comes when heart and
brain and blood are aflame with the paramount
ecstasy of love....</p>
<p>Oh, flame that burns where fires of home
are lit! and oh, flame that burns in the heart
to whom life has not said, Awake! and oh,
flame that smoulders from death to life, and
from life to death, in the dumb lives of those
to whom the primrose way is closed! Everywhere
the burning of the burning, the flame of
the flame, pain and the shadow of pain, joy
and the rapt breath of joy, flame of the flame
that, burning, destroyeth not, till the flame is
no more!...</p>
<p><br />It is said of an ancient poet of the Druid
days that he had the power to see the lines of
the living, and these as though they were
phantoms, separate from the body. Was there
not a young king of Albainn who, in a perilous
hour, discovered the secret of old time, and
knew how a life may be hidden away from
the body so that none may know of it, save the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_393" id="Page_393">[Pg 393]</a></span>
wind that whispers all things, and the tides of
day and night that bear all things upon their
dark flood?...</p>
<p>The fragrance of the forest intoxicated him.
Spring was come indeed. The wild storm had
ruined nothing, for at its fiercest it had swept
overhead. Everywhere the green fire of
Spring would be litten anew. A green flame
would pass from meadow to hedgerow, from
hedgerow to the tangled thickets of bramble
and dog-rose, from the underwoods to the
inmost forest glades.</p>
<p>Everywhere song would be to the birds,
everywhere young life would pulse, everywhere
the rhythm of a new rapture would run
rejoicing. The Miracle of Spring would be
accomplished in the sight of all men, of all
birds and beasts, of all green life. Each, in
its kind would have a swifter throb in the red
blood of the vivid sap....</p>
<p>She was his Magic. The light of their love
was upon everything. Deeply as he loved
beauty he had learned to love it far more
keenly and understandingly because of her.
He saw now through the accidental and everywhere
discerned the Eternal Beauty, the echoes
of whose wandering are in every heart and
brain though few discern the white vision or
hear the haunting voice.... Thus it was she<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_394" id="Page_394">[Pg 394]</a></span>
had for him this immutable attraction which a
few women have for a few men; an appeal, a
charm, that atmosphere of romance, that <i>air</i> of
ideal beauty, wherein lies the secret of all
passionate art.</p>
<p>The world without wonder, the world without
mystery! That indeed is the rainbow
without colours, the sunrise without living
gold, the noon void of light....</p>
<p>In deep love there is no height nor depth
between two hearts, no height nor depth nor
length nor breadth. There is simply love.
What if both at times were wrought too deeply
by this beautiful dream? What if the inner
life triumphed now and then, and each forgot
the deepest instinct of life that here the
body is overlord, and the soul but a divine
consort?</p>
<p><br />There are three races of man. There is
the myriad race which loses all through (not
bestiality, for the brute world is clean and
sane) perverted animalism; and there is the
myriad race which denounces humanity, and
pins all its faith and joy to a life the very
conditions of whose existence are incompatible
with the law to which we are subject—the
sole law, the law of nature.</p>
<p>Then there is that small untoward clan,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_395" id="Page_395">[Pg 395]</a></span>
which knows the divine call of the spirit
through the brain, and the secret whisper of
the soul in the heart, and for ever perceives
the veils of mystery and the rainbows of hope
upon our human horizons, which hears and
sees, and yet turns wisely, meanwhile, to the
life of the green earth, of which we are part,
to the common kindred of living things with
which we are at one—is content, in a word, to
live because of the dream that makes living
so mysteriously sweet and poignant; and to
dream because of the commanding immediacy
of life....</p>
<p>What are dreams but the dust of wayfaring
thoughts? Or whence are they, and what air
is upon their shadowy wings? Do they come
out of the twilight of man's mind: are they
ghosts of exiles from vanished palaces of the
brain: or are they heralds with proclamations
of hidden tidings for the soul that dreams?<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_396" id="Page_396">[Pg 396]</a></span></p>
<h3><br />III</h3>
<h3>THE BEAUTY OF THE WORLD</h3>
<div class="blockquot"><p>"<i>The Souls of the Living are the Beauty of the
World.</i>"—<span class="smcap">Bacon.</span></p></div>
<p>For out of his thoughts about Annaik and
Ynys arose a fuller, a deeper conception
of womanhood. How well he remembered a
legend that Ynys had once told him: a
legend of a fair spirit which goes to and fro
upon the world, the Weaver of Tears. He
loves the pathways of sorrow. His voice is
low and sweet, with a sound like the bubbling
of waters in that fount whence the rainbows
rise. His eyes are in quiet places, and in the
dumb pain of animals as in the agony of the
human brain: but most he is found, oftenest
are the dewy traces of his feet, in the heart of
woman.</p>
<p>Tears, tears: they are not the saltest tears
which are on the lids of those who weep.
Fierce tears there are, hot founts of pain in
the mind of many a man, that are never shed,
but slowly crystallise in furrows on brow and
face, and in deep weariness in the eyes: fierce<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_397" id="Page_397">[Pg 397]</a></span>
tears, unquenchable, in the heart of many a
woman, whose brave eyes look fearlessly at
life, whose dauntless courage goes forth daily
to die but never to be vanquished.</p>
<p>In truth the Weaver of Tears abides in the
heart of woman. O Mother of Pity, of Love,
of deep Compassion: with thee it is to yearn
for ever for the ideal human, to bring the
spiritual love into fashion with human desire,
endlessly to strive, endlessly to fail, always
to hope in spite of disillusion, to love unswervingly
against all baffling and misunderstanding,
and even forgetfulness! O Woman,
whose eyes are always stretched out to her
erring children, whose heart is big enough to
cover all the little children in the world, and
suffer with their sufferings, and joy with their
joys: Woman, whose other divine names are
Strength and Patience, who is no girl, no
virgin, because she has drunk too deeply of the
fount of Life to be very young or very joyful.
Upon her lips is the shadowy kiss of death: in
her eyes is the shadow of birth. She is the
veiled interpreter of the two mysteries. Yet
what joyousness like hers, when she wills:
because of her unwavering hope, her inexhaustible
fount of love?</p>
<p>So it was that just as Alan had long recognised
as a deep truth, how the spiritual nature<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_398" id="Page_398">[Pg 398]</a></span>
of man has been revealed to humanity in many
divine incarnations, so he had come to believe
that the spiritual nature of woman has been
revealed in the many Marys, sisters of the
Beloved, who have had the keys of the soul
and the heart in their unconscious keeping. In
this exquisite truth he knew a fresh and vivid
hope.... A Woman-Saviour, who would
come near to all of us, because in her heart
would be the blind tears of the child, the bitter
tears of the man, and the patient tears of the
woman: who would be the Compassionate One,
with no end or aim but compassion—with no
doctrine to teach, no way to show, but only
deep, wonderful, beautiful, inalienable, unquenchable
compassion.</p>
<p>For in truth there is the divine eternal
feminine counterpart to the divine eternal male,
and both are needed to explain the mystery of
the dual spirit within us—the mystery of the
two in one, so infinitely stranger and more
wonderful than that triune life which the blind
teachers of the blind have made a rock of
stumbling and offence out of a truth clear and
obvious as noon.</p>
<p>We speak of Mother Nature, but we
do not discern the living truth behind our
words. How few of us have the vision of this
great brooding Mother, whose garment is the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_399" id="Page_399">[Pg 399]</a></span>
earth and sea, whose head is pillowed among
the stars: she, who, with death and sleep as
her familiar shapes, soothes and rests all the
weariness of the world, from the waning leaf
to the beating pulse, from the brief span of a
human heart to the furrowing of granite brows
by the uninterrupted sun, the hounds of rain
and wind, and the untrammelled airs of
heaven.</p>
<p>Not cruel, relentless, impotently anarchic,
chaotically potent, this Mater Genetrix. We
see her thus, who are flying threads in the
loom she weaves. But she is patient, abiding,
certain, inviolate, and silent ever. It is only
when we come to this vision of her whom we
call Isis, or Hera, or Orchil, or one of a hundred
other names, our unknown Earth-Mother, that
men and women will know each other aright,
and go hand in hand along the road of life
without striving to crush, to subdue, to usurp,
to retaliate, to separate.</p>
<p>Ah, fair vision of humanity to come: man
and woman side by side, sweet, serene, true,
simple, natural, fulfilling earth's and heaven's
behests, unashamed, unsophisticated, unaffected,
each to each and for each, children of one
mother, inheritors of a like destiny, and, at the
last, artificers of an equal fate.</p>
<p>Pondering thus, Alan rose, and looked out,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_400" id="Page_400">[Pg 400]</a></span>
into the night. In that great stillness, wherein
the moonlight lay like the visible fragrance of
the earth, he gazed long and intently. How
shadow, now, were those lives that had so
lately palpitated in this very place: how
strange their silence, their incommunicable
knowledge, their fathomless peace!</p>
<p>Was it all lost ... the long endurance of
pain, the pangs of sorrow? If so, what was
the lesson of life? Surely to live with sweet
serenity and gladness, content against the inevitable
hour. There is solace of a kind in
the idea of a common end, of that terrible
processional march of life wherein the
myriad is momentary, and the immeasurable
is but a passing shadow. But, alas, it is only
solace of a kind: for what heart that has
beat to the pulse of love can relinquish the
sweet dream of life, and what coronal can
philosophy put upon the brows of youth in
place of eternity.</p>
<p>No, no: of this he felt sure. In the Beauty
of the World lies the ultimate redemption of
our mortality. When we shall become at one
with nature in a sense profounder even than
the poetic imaginings of most of us, we shall
understand what now we fail to discern. The
arrogance of those who would have the stars
as candles for our night, and the universe as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_401" id="Page_401">[Pg 401]</a></span>
a pleasance for our thought, will be as impossible
as their blind fatuity who say we are
of dust, briefly vitalised, that shall be dust
again, with no fragrance saved from the rude
bankruptcy of life, no beauty raised up
against the sun to bloom anew.</p>
<p>It is no idle dream, this: no idle dream that
we are a perishing clan among the sons of
God, because of this slow waning of our
joy, of our passionate delight, in the Beauty
of the World. We have been unable to look
out upon the shining of our star, for the
vision overcomes us; and we have used veils
which we call "scenery," "picturesqueness,"
and the like—poor, barren words that are so
voiceless and remote before the rustle of
leaves and the lap of water, before the ancient
music of the wind, and all the sovran eloquence
of the tides of light. But a day may come—nay,
shall surely come—when indeed the
poor and the humble shall inherit the earth:
they who have not made a league with temporal
evils and out of whose heart shall arise
the deep longing, that shall become universal,
of the renewal of youth.</p>
<p><br />... Often, too, alone in his observatory,
where he was wont to spend much of his
time, Alan knew that strange nostalgia of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_402" id="Page_402">[Pg 402]</a></span>
mind for impossible things. Then, wrought
for a while from his vision of green life, and
flamed by another green fire than that born
of the earth, <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'hs'">he</ins> dreamed his dream. With
him, the peopled solitude of night was a concourse
of confirming voices. He did not
dread the silence of the stars, the cold remoteness
of the stellar fire.</p>
<p>In that other watch-tower in Paris, where
he had spent the best hours of his youth, he
had loved that nightly watch on the constellations.
Now, as then, in the pulse of the planets
he found assurances which faith had not
given him. In the vast majestic order of
that nocturnal march, that diurnal retreat, he
had learned the law of the whirling leaf and
the falling star, of the slow æon-delayed
comet and of the slower wane of solar fires.
Looking with visionary eyes into that congregation
of stars, he realised, not the littleness
of the human dream, but its divine
impulsion. It was only when, after long vigils
into the quietudes of night, he turned his
gaze from the palaces of the unknown, and
thought of the baffled fretful swarming in the
cities of men, that his soul rose in revolt
against the sublime ineptitude of man's
spiritual leaguer against destiny.</p>
<p>Destiny—"An Dan"—it was a word familiar<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_403" id="Page_403">[Pg 403]</a></span>
to him since childhood, when first he had
heard it on the lips of old Ian Macdonald.
And once, on the eve of the Feast of Paschal,
when Alan had asked Daniel Dare what was
the word which the stars spelled from zenith
to nadir, the Astronomer had turned and
answered simply, "<i>C'est le Destin</i>."</p>
<p>But Alan was of the few to whom this
talismanic word opens lofty perspectives, even
while it obscures those paltry vistas which we
deem unending and dignify with vain hopes
and void immortalities.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_404" id="Page_404">[Pg 404]</a></span></p>
<div class="blockquot"><br />
<p><i>To live in Beauty is to sum up in four words all
the spiritual aspiration of the soul of man.</i>—F. M.</p></div><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_405" id="Page_405">[Pg 405]</a></span></p>
<hr style="width: 65%;" />
<h2>A DREAM</h2>
<h3><i>To<br />
G. R. S. MEAD</i></h3>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_406" id="Page_406">[Pg 406]</a></span></p>
<div class="blockquot"><p><i>Our thought, our consciousness, is but the scintillation
of a wave: below us is a moving shadow, our brief
forecast and receding way; beneath the shadow are
depths sinking into depths, and then the unfathomable
unknown.</i>—F. M.</p></div><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_407" id="Page_407">[Pg 407]</a></span></p>
<hr style="width: 65%;" />
<h2>A Dream</h2>
<p>I was on a vast, an illimitable plain, where
the dark blue horizons were sharp as the edges
of hills. It was the world, but there was
nothing in the world. There was not a blade
of grass nor the hum of an insect, nor the
shadow of a bird's wing. The mountains had
sunk like waves in the sea when there is no
wind; the barren hills had become dust.
Forests had become the fallen leaf; and the
leaf had passed. I was aware of one who
stood beside me, though that knowledge was
of the spirit only; and my eyes were filled with
the same nothingness as I beheld above and
beneath and beyond. I would have thought I
was in the last empty glens of Death, were it
not for a strange and terrible sound that I took
to be the voice of the wind coming out of
nothing, travelling over nothingness and moving
onward into nothing.</p>
<p>"There is only the wind," I said to myself in
a whisper.</p>
<p>Then the voice of the dark Power beside
me, whom in my heart I knew to be Dalua, the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_408" id="Page_408">[Pg 408]</a></span>
Master of Illusions, said: "Verily, this is your
last illusion."</p>
<p>I answered: "It is the wind."</p>
<p>And the voice answered: "That is not the
wind that you hear, for the wind is dead. It is
the empty, hollow echo of my laughter."</p>
<p>Then, suddenly, he who was beside me lifted
up a small stone, smooth as a pebble of the sea.
It was grey and flat, and yet to me had a
terrible beauty because it was the last vestige
of the life of the world.</p>
<p>The Presence beside me lifted up the stone
and said: "It is the end."</p>
<p>And the horizons of the world came in upon
me like a rippling shadow. And I leaned over
darkness and saw whirling stars. These were
gathered up like leaves blown from a tree,
and in a moment their lights were quenched,
and they were further from me than grains of
sand blown on a whirlwind of a thousand
years.</p>
<p>Then he, that terrible one, Master of Illusions,
let fall the stone, and it sank into the
abyss and fell immeasurably into the infinite.
And under my feet the world was as a falling
wave, and was not. And I fell, though without
sound, without motion. And for years
and years I fell below the dim waning of
light; and for years and years I fell through<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_409" id="Page_409">[Pg 409]</a></span>
universes of dusk; and for years and years
and years I fell through the enclosing deeps of
darkness. It was to me as though I fell for
centuries, for æons, for unimaginable time. I
knew I had fallen beyond time, and that I
inhabited eternity, where were neither height,
nor depth, nor width, nor space.</p>
<p>But, suddenly, without sound, without motion,
I stood steadfast upon a vast ledge. Before
me, on that ledge of darkness become rock,
I saw this stone which had been lifted from
the world of which I was a shadow, after
shadow itself had died away. And as I looked,
this stone became fire and rose in flame.
Then the flame was not. And when I looked
the stone was water; it was as a pool that
did not overflow, a wave that did not rise or
fall, a shaken mirror wherein nothing was
troubled.</p>
<p>Then, as dew is gathered in silence, the
water was without form or colour or motion.
And the stone seemed to me like a handful
of earth held idly in the poise of unseen
worlds. What I thought was a green flame
rose from it, and I saw that it had the greenness
of grass, and had the mystery of life.
The green herb passed as green grass in a
drought; and I saw the waving of wings.
And I saw shape upon shape, and image upon<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_410" id="Page_410">[Pg 410]</a></span>
image, and symbol upon symbol. Then I saw
a man, and he, too, passed; and I saw a woman,
and she, too, passed; and I saw a child, and
the child passed. Then the stone was a Spirit.
And it shone there like a lamp. And I fell
backward through deeps of darkness, through
unimaginable time.</p>
<p>And when I stood upon the world again it
was like a glory. And I saw the stone lying at
my feet.</p>
<p>And One said: "Do you not know me,
brother?"</p>
<p>And I said: "Speak, Lord."</p>
<p>And Christ stooped and kissed me upon the
brow.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_411" id="Page_411">[Pg 411]</a></span></p>
<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_412" id="Page_412">[Pg 412]</a></span></p>
<h2>NOTES</h2>
<div class="blockquot"><p><i>Unity does not lie in the emotional life of expression
which we call Art, which discerns it; it does not lie in
nature, but in the Soul of man.</i>—F. M.</p></div><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_413" id="Page_413">[Pg 413]</a></span></p>
<hr style="width: 65%;" />
<h2>Notes to First Edition</h2>
<h3>THE DIVINE ADVENTURE</h3>
<p>When "The Divine Adventure" appeared
in the <i>Fortnightly Review</i> in November and
December last, I received many comments and
letters. From these I infer that my present
readers will also be of two sections, those who
understand at once why, in this symbolical
presentment, I ignore the allegorical method—and
those who, accustomed to the artificial
method of allegory, would rather see this
"story of a soul" told in that method, without
actuality, or as an ordinary essay stript of
narrative.</p>
<p>But each can have only his own way of
travelling towards a desired goal. I chose
my way, because in no other, as it seemed to
me, could I convey what I wanted to convey.
Is it so great an effort of the imagination to
conceive of the Mind and Soul actual as the
Body is actual? And is there any tragic
issue so momentous, among all the tragic
issues of life, as the problem of the Spirit, the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_414" id="Page_414">[Pg 414]</a></span>
Mind—the Will as I call it; that problem as
to whether it has to share the assured destiny
of the Body, or the desired and possible
destiny of the Soul? There is no spiritual
tragedy so poignant as this uncertainty of the
Will, the Spirit, what we call the thinking
part of us, before the occult word of the Soul,
inhabiting here but as an impatient exile, and
the inevitable end of that Body to which it is
so intimately allied, with which are its immediate,
and in a sense its most vital interests,
and in whose mortality it would seem to have
a dreadful share.</p>
<p>The symbolist, unlike the allegorist, cannot
disregard the actual, the reality as it seems:
he must, indeed, be supremely heedful of this
reality as it seems. The symbolist or the mystic
(properly they are one) abhors the vague,
what is called the "mystical": he is supremely
a realist, but his realism is of the spirit and
the imagination, and not of externals, or
rather not of these merely, for there, too,
he will not disregard actuality, but make it
his base, as the lark touches the solid earth
before it rises where it can see both Earth and
Heaven and sing a song that partakes of
each and belongs to both. "In the kingdom
of the imagination the ideal must ever be
faithful to the general laws of nature," wrote<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_415" id="Page_415">[Pg 415]</a></span>
one of the wisest of mystics. Art is pellucid
mystery, and the only spiritually logical interpretation
of life; and her inevitable language
is Symbol—by which (whether in colour, or
form, or sound, or word, or however the
symbol be translated) a spiritual image illumines
a reality that the material fact narrows or
obscures.</p>
<p>For the rest, "The Divine Adventure" is
an effort to solve, or obtain light upon, the
profoundest human problem. It is by looking
inward that we shall find the way outward.
The gods—and what we mean by the gods—the
gods seeking God have ever penetrated the
soul by two roads, that of nature and that
of art. Edward Calvert put it supremely
well when he said "I go inward to God:
outward to the gods." It was Calvert also
who wrote:—</p>
<p>"To charm the truthfulness of eternal law
into a guise which it has not had before, and
clothe the invention with expression, this is
the magic with which the poet would lead the
listener into a world of his own, and make
him sit down in the charmed circle of his
own gods."</p>
<p><br /><i>Page 96. The Félire na Naomh Nerennach</i>
(so spelt, more phonetically than correctly)<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_416" id="Page_416">[Pg 416]</a></span>
is an invaluable early "Chronicle of Irish
Saints." Uladh—or Ulla—is the Gaelic for
Ulster, though the ancient boundaries were
not the same as those of the modern province;
and at periods Uladh stood for all North
Ireland. Tara in the south was first the
capital of a kingdom, and later the federal
capital. Thus, at the beginning of the Christian
era, Concobar mac Nessa was both King
of the Ultonians (the clans of Uladh) and
Ard-Righ or High-King of Ireland, a nominal
suzerainty.</p>
<p>The name of Mochaoi's abbacy, <ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both 'n'Aondruim' and 'n'-Aondruim' were used in this text. This was retained."><i>n' Aondruim</i></ins>,
was in time anglicised to Antrim.</p>
<p>The characteristic Gaelic passage quoted in
English at p. <a href="#Page_98">98</a> is not from the <i>Félire na
Naomh Nerennach</i>, but from a Hebridean
source: excerpted from one of the many
<ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'treasures-trove'">treasure-troves</ins> rescued from extant or recently
extant Gaelic lore by Mr. Alexander
Carmichael, all soon to be published (the
outcome of a long life of unselfish devotion)
under the title <i>Or agus Ob</i>, though we may be
sure that there will be little "dross" and much
"gold."</p>
<p><br /><i>Page 101.</i> The allusion is to the story or
sketch called "The Book of the Opal" in <i>The
Dominion of Dreams</i>: a sketch true in essentials,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_417" id="Page_417">[Pg 417]</a></span>
but having at its close an arbitrary
interpolation of external symbolism which I
now regret as superfluous. I have since realised
that the only living and convincing symbol is
that which is conceived of the spirit and not
imagined by the mind. My friend's life, and
end, were strange enough—and significant
enough—without the effort to bring home to
other minds by an arbitrary formula what
should have been implicit.</p>
<p><br /><i>Page 102.</i> I have again and again, directly
or indirectly, since my first book <i>Pharais</i> to
the repeated record in this book, alluded to
Seumas Macleod; and as I have shown in
"Barabal," here, and in the dedication to this
book, it is to the old islander and to my
Hebridean nurse, Barabal, that I owe more
than to any other early influences. For those
who do not understand the character of the
Island-Gael, or do not realise that all Scotland
is not Presbyterian, it may be as well to add
that many of the islesmen are of the Catholic
faith (broadly, the Southern Hebrides are
wholly Catholic), and that therefore the brooding
imagination of an old islander—who
spoke Gaelic only, and had never visited the
mainland—might the more readily dwell upon
Mary the Mother: Mary of the Lamb, Mary<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_418" id="Page_418">[Pg 418]</a></span>
the Shepherdess, as she is lovingly called. I
do not, for private reasons, name the island
where he lived: but I have written of him, or
of what he said, nothing but what was so, or
was thus said. He had suffered much, and
was lonely: but was, I think, the happiest, and,
I am sure, the wisest human being I have
known. What I cannot now recall is whether
his belief in Mary's Advent was based on an
old prophecy, or upon a faith of his own
dreams and visions, coloured by the visions
and dreams of a like mind and longing:
perhaps, and likeliest, upon both. I was not
more than seven years old when that happened
of which I have written on p. <a href="#Page_102">102</a>, and so
recall with surety only that which I saw and
heard.</p>
<p>I am glad to know that another is hardly
less indebted to old Seumas Macleod. I am
not permitted to mention his name, but a
friend and kinsman allows me to tell this: that
when he was about sixteen he was on the
remote island where Seumas lived, and on the
morrow of his visit came at sunrise upon
the old man, standing looking seaward with
his bonnet removed from his long white
locks; and upon his speaking to Seumas
(when he saw he was not "at his prayers")
was answered, in Gaelic of course, "Every<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_419" id="Page_419">[Pg 419]</a></span>
morning like this I take off my hat to the beauty
of the world."</p>
<p>The untaught islander who could say this
had learned an ancient wisdom, of more
account than wise books, than many philosophies.</p>
<p>Let me tell one other story of him, which I
have meant often to tell, but have as often
forgotten. He had gone once to the Long
Island, with three fishermen, in their herring-coble.
The fish had been sold, and the boat
had sailed southward to a Lews haven where
Seumas had a relative. The younger men had
"hanselled" their good bargain overwell, and
were laughing and talking freely, as they
walked up the white road from the haven.
Something was said that displeased Seumas
greatly, and he might have spoken swiftly in
reproof; but just then a little naked child ran
laughing from a cottage, chased by his smiling
mother. Seumas caught up the child, who was
but an infant, and set him in their midst, and
then kneeled and said the few words of a
Hebridean hymn beginning:—</p>
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">"Even as a little child<br /></span>
<span class="i2">Most holy, pure...."</span>
</div></div>
<p>No more was said, but the young men understood;
and he who long afterward told me of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_420" id="Page_420">[Pg 420]</a></span>
this episode added that though he had often
since acted weakly and spoken foolishly, he
had never, since that day, uttered foul words.
Another like characteristic anecdote of Seumas
(as the skipper who made his men cease
mocking a "fool") I have told in the tale
called "The Amadan" in the <i>The Dominion of
Dreams</i>.</p>
<p>I could write much of this revered friend—so
shrewd and genial and worldly-wise, for
all his lonely life; so blithe in spirit and swiftly
humorous; himself a poet, and remembering
countless songs and tales of old; strong and
daring, on occasion; good with the pipes,
as with the nets; seldom angered, but then
with a fierce anger, barbaric in its vehemence;
a loyal clansman; in all things, good and not
so good, a Gael of the Isles.</p>
<p>But since I have not done so, not gathered
into one place, I add this note.</p>
<p><br /><i>Page 113.</i> The kingdom of the Suderöer (<i>i.e.</i>
Southern Isles) was the Norse name for the
realm of the Hebrides and Inner Hebrides
when the Isles were under Scandinavian
dominion.</p>
<p><br /><i>Page 118.</i> The ignorance or supineness
which characterises so many English writers<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_421" id="Page_421">[Pg 421]</a></span>
on Celtic history is to be found even among
Highland and Irish clerics and others who
have not taken the trouble to study or even
become acquainted with their own ancient
literature, but fallen into the foolish and
discreditable conventionalism which maintains
that before Columban or in pre-Christian
days the Celtic race consisted of wholly uncivilised
and broken tribes, rivals only in
savagery.</p>
<p>How little true that is; as wide of truth as
the statements that the far influences of Iona
ceased with the death of Columba. Not only
was the island for two centuries thereafter (in
the words of an eminent historian) "the
nursery of bishops, the centre of education,
the asylum of religious knowledge, the place
of union, the capital and necropolis of the
Celtic race," but the spiritual colonies of
Iona had everywhere leavened western Europe.
Charlemagne knew and reverenced "this
little people of Iona," who from a remote
island in the wild seas beyond the almost as
remote countries of Scotland and England
had spread the Gospel everywhere. Not only
were many monasteries founded by monks
from Iona in the narrower France of that
day, but also in Lorraine, Alsatia, in Switzerland,
and in the German states; in distant<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_422" id="Page_422">[Pg 422]</a></span>
Bavaria even, no fewer than sixteen were
thus founded. In the very year the Danes
made their first descent on the doomed
island, a monk of Iona was Bishop of Tarento
in Italy. In a word, in that day, Iona was
the brightest gem in the spiritual crown of
Rome.</p>
<p><br /><i>Page 128.</i> The "little-known namesake of
my own" alluded to is Fiona, or Fionaghal
Macleod, known (in common with her more
famous sister Mary) by the appellation <i>Nighean
Alasdair Ruadh</i>, "Daughter of Alasdair the
Red," was born <i>circa</i> 1575.</p>
<p><br /><i>Page 130.</i> Columba, whose house-name was
Crimthan, "Wolf"—surviving in our Scoto-Gaelic
MacCrimmon—who was of royal
Irish blood and, through his mother of royal
Scottish (Pictish) blood also, came to Iona in
<span class="smcap">A.D.</span> 563, when he was in his forty-second year.
At that date, St. Augustine, "the English
Columba," had not yet landed in Kent—that
more famous event occurring thirty-four years
later. In this year of 563, the East had not
yet awakened to its wonderful dream that to-day
has in number more dreamers than the
Cross of Christ; for it was not till six years
later, when Columba was on a perilous mission<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_423" id="Page_423">[Pg 423]</a></span>
of conversion among the Picts, that Mahomet
was born. In 563, when Colum landed on
Iona, the young Italian priest who was afterwards
to be called the Architect of the Church
and to become famous as Pope Gregory the
Great, was dreaming his ambitious dreams;
and farther East, in Constantinople, then the
capital of the Western World, the great
Roman Emperor Justinian was laying the
foundation of modern law.</p>
<p><br />With the advent of Charlemagne, two
hundred years later, "the old world" passed.
When the ninth century opened, the great
Gregory's dearest hopes were in the dust
where his bones lay; Justinian's metropolis
was fallen from her pride; and, on Iona, the
heathen Danes drank to Odin.</p>
<p><br /><i>Page 136.</i> The <i>Mor-Rigân</i>. This euphemerised
Celtic queen is called by many names:
even those resembling that just given vary
much—<i>Morrigû</i>, <i>Mor Reega</i>, <i>Morrigan</i>, <i>Morgane</i>,
<i>Mur-ree (Mor Ree)</i>, etc. The old word
<i>Mor-Rigan</i> means "the great queen." She is
the mother of the Gaelic Gods, as <i>Bona Dea</i>
of the Romans. "<i>Anu</i> is her name," says an
ancient writer. Anu suckled the elder gods.
Her name survives in <i>Tuatha-De-Danann</i>, in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_424" id="Page_424">[Pg 424]</a></span>
<i>Dânu</i>, <i>Ana</i>, and perhaps in that mysterious
Scoto-Gaelic name, Teampull <i>Anait</i>—the
temple of Anait—whom some writers collate
with an ancient Asiatic goddess, Anait (see p.
<a href="#Page_171">171</a>). It has been suggested that the Celts
gave <i>Bona Dea</i> to the Romans, for these considered
her Hyperborean. A less likely derivation
of the popular "<i>Morrigû</i>" is that <i>Mor
Reega</i> is <i>Mor Reagh</i> (wealth). Keating, it
may be added, speaks of Monagan, Badha,
and Macha as the three chief goddesses of the
Divine Race of Ana (the Tuatha De Danann).
Students of Celtic mythology and legend,
and of the Táin-bó-Cuailgne in particular,
will remember that her white bull "Find-Bennach"
was "antagonist" to the famous
brown bull of Cuailgne. The Mor Rigan has
been identified with Cybele—as the Goddess
of Prosperity: but only speculatively. Another
name of the Mother of all Gods is <i>Aine
(Anu?)</i>. Prof. Rhys says <i>Ri</i> or <i>Roi</i> was the
Mother of the gods of the non-Celtic races.
It is suggestive that <i>Ana</i> is a Ph[oe]nician
word: that people had a (virgin?) goddess
named <i>Ana-Perema</i>.</p>
<p><br /><i>Page 156.</i> <i>Finn</i>—<i><ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both 'Oìsin' and 'Oisìn' were used in this text. This was retained.">Oisìn</ins></i>—<i>Oscur</i>—<i>Gaul</i>—<i>Diarmid</i>—<i>Cuchullin</i>.
These names as they
stand exhibit the uncertainty of Gaelic name-spelling.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_425" id="Page_425">[Pg 425]</a></span>
In the case of the first named there
is constant variation. The oldest writing is
Find (also Fend), or Fin. Some Gaelic writers
prefer, in modern use, Fionn. Through a
misapprehension, Macpherson popularised the
name in Scotland as Fingal, and the <i>Féin</i>
and <i>Fianna</i> (for they are not the same, as
commonly supposed, the former being the
Clan or People of Finn, and the latter a kind
of militia raised for the defence of Uladh),
as the Fingalians. Some Irish critics have
been severe upon Macpherson's "impossible
nomenclature"; but <i>Fingal</i> is not "impossible,"
though it is certainly not old Gaelic for Finn—for
the word can quite well stand for Fair
Stranger, and might well have been a name
given to a Norse (or for that matter a Gaelic)
champion.</p>
<p><i>Fin MacCumhal</i> (Fin MacCooal or MacCool)
is now commonly rendered as Finn or Fionn.
The latter is good Gaelic and the finer word,
but the other is older. Fionn obtains more in
Gaelic Scotland. <i>Fingal</i> and the <i>Fingalians</i>
are modern, and due solely to the great vogue
given by Macpherson—though many writers
and even Gaelic speakers have adopted
them.</p>
<p>Fionn's famous son, again, is almost universally
(outside Gaelic Scotland and Ireland)<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_426" id="Page_426">[Pg 426]</a></span>
known as Ossian, because of Macpherson's
spelling of the name. Neither the Highland
nor Irish Gaels pronounce it so—but Oshshen,
and the like—best represented by the
Gaelic <i><ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both 'Oìsin' and 'Oisìn' were used in this text. This was retained.">Oisìn</ins></i> or Oisein. Personally I prefer
Oisìn to any other spelling; but perhaps it
would be best if the word were uniformly
spelt in the manner in which it is universally
familiar. Obviously, too, "Ossianic" is the
only suitable use of the name in adjective
form. <i>Oscur</i> is probably merely a Gaelic
spelling of the Norse Oscar; though I
recollect a student of ancient Gaelic names
telling me that the name was Gaelic and only
resembled the familiar Scandinavian word.
<i>Gaul</i> is commonly so spelt; but Goll is
probably more correct. <i>Diarmid</i> has many
variations, from Diarmuid to Dermid; but
Diarmid is the best English equivalent both
in sound and correctness.</p>
<p>It is still a moot point as to whether in
narration, Gaelic names should be given as
they are, or be anglicised—or Gaelic exclamations
to phrases in their original spelling,
or more phonetically to an English ear. I
think it should depend on circumstances, and
within the writer's tact. I have myself been
taken to task again and again, by critics
eager with the eagerness of little knowledge,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_427" id="Page_427">[Pg 427]</a></span>
for partial anglicisation of names and presumed
mistakes in Gaelic spelling, when, surely, the
intention was obvious that a compromise was
being attempted. Let me give an example.
How would the English reader like a story of,
say, a Donald Macintyre and a Grace Maclean
and an Ivor Mackay if these names were given
in their Gaelic form, as Domnhuil Mac-an-t-Saoir
and Giorsal nic Illeathain and Imhir
Mac Aodh—or even if simple names, like, say,
Meave and Malvina, were given as Medb or
Malmhin?</p>
<p>It is a pity there is not one recognised way
of spelling the legendary name of Setanta, the
chief hero of the Gaelic chivalry. Probably
the best rendering is Cuchulain. The old form
is Cuculaind. But colloquially the name in
Gaelic is called Coohoolin or Coohullun; and
so Cuculaind would mislead the ordinary
reader. The Scottish version is generally
Cuchullin—the <i>ch</i> soft: a more correct rendering
of the Macphersonian Cuthullin, a misnomer
responsible no doubt for the common
mistake that the <ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both 'Coolins' and 'Coolin' mountain were used in this text. This was retained.">Coolin</ins> (Cuthullin) mountains
in Skye have any connection with the great
Gaelic hero (see p. <a href="#Page_155">155</a>). Setanta, a prince
of Uladh, was taught for a time in the art of
weaponry by one Culain or Culaind, and
after a certain famous act of prowess became<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_428" id="Page_428">[Pg 428]</a></span>
known as The Hound of Culain—<i>Cu</i> being a
hound, whence Cuculain, or with the sign of
the genitive, Cuchulain. Every variation of
the name, and all the legends of the Cuchullin
cycle, will be found in Miss Eleanor Hull's
excellent redaction, published by Mr. Nutt.
The interested reader should see also the
classical work of O'Curry: the vivid and
romantic chronicle of Mr. Standish O'Grady;
and the fascinating and scholarly edition of
<i>The Feast of Bricrin</i>, recently published as the
second volume of the Irish Texts Society, by
Dr. George Henderson, the most scholarly of
Highland specialists.</p>
<p><br /><i>Page 162 seq.</i> No one has collected so much
material on the subject of St. Michael as Mr.
Alexander Carmichael has done. Some of his
lore, in <ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both 'sheiling-hymn' and 'shealing-hymn' were used in this text. This was retained.">sheiling-hymns</ins> and fishing-hymns, he
has already made widely known, directly and
indirectly: but in his forthcoming <i>Or agus Ob</i>,
already alluded to, there will be found a long
and invaluable section devoted to St. Micheil,
as also, I understand, one of like length and
interest on St. Bride or Briget, the most beloved
of Hebridean saints, and herself probably a
Christian successor of a much more ancient
Brighde, a Celtic deity, it is said, of Song and
Beauty.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_429" id="Page_429">[Pg 429]</a></span></p>
<p><br /><i>Page 181. Be'al.</i> I do not think there is
any evidence to prove that the Be'al or Bêl
often spelt Baal—whose name and worship
survive to this day in <i>Bealltainn</i> (Beltane),
May-day—of Gaelic mythology, is identical
with the Ph[oe]nician god Baal, though probably
of a like significance. The Gaelic name,
which may be anglicised into Be'al, signifies
"Source of All."</p>
<p>I am inclined to believe that the Be'al or
Bêl of the Gaels has his analogue in the
Gaulish mythology in <i>Hesus</i> (also <i>Esua</i>, <i>Aesus</i>,
and <i>Heus</i>), a mysterious (supreme?) god of
ancient Gaul, surviving still in Armorican
legend. If so, Hesus or Aesus may be identical
with the "lost" Gaelic god <i>Aesar</i> or <i>Aes</i>.
<i>Aesar</i> means "fire-kindler," whence the
Creator. (In this connection I would ask if
<i>Aed</i>, an ancient Gaelic god of fire, also of
death, be identical with (as averred) a still
more ancient Greek name of Fire, or God of
Fire = <i>Aed</i>?). Be'al, the Source of All, may
take us back to the Ph[oe]nician <i>Baal</i>: but the
Gaelic <i>Aes</i> and the Gaulish <i>Aesus (Hesus)</i> take
us, with the Scandinavian <i>Aesir</i>, further still:
to the Persian <i>Aser</i>, the Hindoo <i>Aeswar</i>, the
Egyptian <i>Asi</i> (the Sun-bull), and the Etruscan
<i>Aesar</i>. The <i>Bhagavat-Gita</i> says of Aeswar that
"he resides in every mortal."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_430" id="Page_430">[Pg 430]</a></span></p>
<p><br /><i>Pages 199-203.</i> This section, slightly
adapted, is from an unpublished book, in
gradual preparation, entitled <i>The Chronicles of
the <ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both 'Sìdhe' and 'Sidhe' were used in this text. This was retained.">Sìdhe</ins></i>.</p>
<p><br /><i>Page 225. The Culdees.</i> Though I have
alluded in the text to the probable meaning
of a word that has perplexed many people, I
add this note as I have just come upon another
theoretical statement about the Culdees as
though they were an oriental race or sect.
The writer evidently thinks they are the same
as Chaldæans, and builds a startlingly unscientific
theory on that assumption. In all
probability the word is simply <i>Cille-Dè</i>, <i>i.e.</i>,
[the man of the] Cell of God—<i>Cille</i> being
Cell, a Church—and so a Cille-Dè man would
be "man of God," a monk, a cleric. A
much more puzzling problem obtains in the
apparent traces of Buddha-worship in the
Hebrides. It may or may not be of much
account that the author of <i>Lewisiana</i> "admits
reluctantly" that "we must accept the possibility
of a Buddhist race passing north of
Ireland." I have not seen <i>Lewisiana</i> for some
years, and cannot recall on what grounds the
author arrives at his conclusion. But from my
notes on the subject I see that M. Coquebert-Montbret,
in the <i>Soc. des Antiquaires de</i><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_431" id="Page_431">[Pg 431]</a></span>
<i>France</i>, argues at great length that the Asiatic
Buddhist missionaries who penetrated to Western
Europe, reached Ireland and Scotland.
He asks if the ancient Gaelic Deity named
<i>Budd</i> or <i>Budwas</i> be not <i>Buddh</i> (Buddha). Another
French antiquary avers that the Druids
were "an order of Eastern priests adoring
Buddwas." Some light on the problem is
thrown by the fact that the Gaulo-Celtic
museum in St. Germain is an ancient Celtic
"god"—the fourth in kind that has been
found—with its legs crossed after the manner
of the Indian Buddha. It is more interesting
still to note that in the Hebrides spirits
are sometimes called <i>Boduchas</i> or <i>Buddachs</i>, and
that the same word is (or used to be) applied
to heads of families, as the Master.</p>
<p><br /><i>Pages 242, 248.</i> These two sections, rearranged,
and in part <ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both 're-written' and 'rewritten' were used in this text. This was retained.">rewritten</ins>, are excerpted
from what I wrote in Iona, some five years
ago, for a preface to <i>The Sin-Eater</i>.</p>
<p><br /><i>Page 256.</i> In its original form this was
written about a book of great interest and
beauty, <i>The Shadow of Arvor: Legendary
Romances of Brittany</i>. Translated and retold
by Edith Wingate Rinder.</p>
<p><i>Arvor (or Armor</i>) is one of the bardic<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_432" id="Page_432">[Pg 432]</a></span>
equivalents of <i>Armorica</i>, as Brittany is called
in many old tales. The name means the Sea-Washed
Land, <i>Vor</i> or <i>Mor</i> being Breton for
"sea," as in the famous region <i>Morbihan</i> the
Little Sea. Neither the Bretons for their
Cymric kindred, however, call Brittany <i>Arvor</i>,
or the Latinised <i>Armorica</i>. Arvor is the poetic
name of a portion of Basse Bretagne only.
Bretons call Brittany <i>Breiz</i>, and their language
<i>Brezoned</i>, and themselves <i>Breiziaded</i> (singular
<i>Breiziad</i>)—as they keep to the French
differentiation of <i>Bretagne</i> and <i>Grande
Bretagne</i> in <i>Bro-Zaos</i>, the Saxon-Land, as
they speak of France (beyond Brittany), as
<i>Bro-chall</i>, the Land of Gaul. In Gaelic I think
Brittany is always spoken of as <i>Breatunn-Beag</i>,
Little Britain. The Welsh call the country,
its people, and language, <i>Llydaw</i>, <i>Llydawiaid</i>,
<i>Llydawaeg</i>.</p>
<p class="right"><span style="margin-right: 5em;">F. M.</span>
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_433" id="Page_433">[Pg 433]</a></span></p>
<hr style="width: 65%;" />
<h2>BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE</h2>
<h3>By Mrs. William Sharp</h3>
<p>The first edition of <i>The Divine Adventure: Iona:
By <ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both 'sun-down' and 'sundown' were used in this text. This was retained.">Sundown</ins> Shores</i> was published in 1900 by Messrs.
Chapman and Hall. The Titular Essay (since revised)
appeared first in <i>The Fortnightly Review</i> for November
and December, 1899. A large portion of "Iona"
(though in different sequence) appeared also in <i>The
Fortnightly</i>, March and April, 1900. Both "spiritual
histories" were published separately in book form
in America by Mr. T. Mosher; "Iona," curtailed and
rearranged under the title of "The Isle of Dreams,"
in 1905. The Essay "Celtic" in its original form,
first printed in <i>The Contemporary Review</i>, will now
be found, revised and materially added to, in <i>The
Winged Destiny</i>. In this Uniform Edition of the
writings of "Fiona Macleod" (William Sharp) the
following stories, etc., have been transferred to the
present volume: "The White Fever" and "The
Smoothing of the Hand" from <i>The Sin-Eater</i>; "The
White Heron" which relates to the earlier story
of Mary Maclean in <i>Pharais</i>, is from <i>The Dominion
of Dreams</i>, and in its earliest version appeared
with illustrations in the Christmas number of
<i>Harper</i> in 1898. "A Dream" appeared first in
the <i>Theosophical Review</i> of September, 1904. Finally
I have added to this volume the latter portion
and some detached fragments from <i>Green Fire</i>, a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_434" id="Page_434">[Pg 434]</a></span>
Romance by "Fiona Macleod" dealing with Brittany
and the Hebrid Isles and published in 1896 by Messrs.
A. Constable, and in America by Messrs. Harper
Bros. But William Sharp considered that the book
suffered from grave defects of design and construction
and decided that, when out of print, it should not
be republished. "The Herdsman," however, is—as
he stated in a note to the first Edition of <i>The
Dominion of Dreams</i>, "a <ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both 're-written' and 'rewritten' were used in this text. This was retained.">re-written</ins> and materially
altered version of the Hebridean part of <i>Green
Fire</i> of which book it is all I care to preserve."
Nevertheless, in accordance with the wishes of
several friends, I have very willingly put together
a series of detached fragments from the book and
placed them beside "The Herdsman" as, in our
opinion equally worthy of preservation, since the
author's prohibition precludes the possibility of
reprinting the book in its entirety.</p>
<p><br /></p>
<hr />
<p class="center">WOODS & SONS, LTD., PRINTERS, LONDON, N.</p>
<hr />
<div class="blockquot2">
<br />
<h4><i>UNIFORM WITH THIS VOLUME</i></h4>
<h3>THE COLLECTED WORKS<br />
OF FIONA MACLEOD<br />
(WILLIAM SHARP)</h3>
<p>In Seven Volumes. Crown 8vo. Price 5s. net.
With Photogravure Frontispieces from
Photographs and Drawings by D. Y.
Cameron, A.R.S.A.</p>
<div class="center">
<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="">
<tr><td align="right">I.</td><td align="left">PHARAIS: THE MOUNTAIN LOVERS</td></tr>
<tr><td align="right">II.</td><td align="left">THE SIN EATER; THE WASHER OF THE FORD AND OTHER LEGENDARY MORALITIES</td></tr>
<tr><td align="right">III.</td><td align="left">THE DOMINION OF DREAMS: UNDER THE DARK STAR</td></tr>
<tr><td align="right">IV.</td><td align="left">THE DIVINE ADVENTURE: IONA: STUDIES IN SPIRITUAL HISTORY</td></tr>
<tr><td align="right">V.</td><td align="left">THE WINGED DESTINY: STUDIES IN THE SPIRITUAL HISTORY OF THE GAEL</td></tr>
<tr><td align="right">VI.</td><td align="left">THE SILENCE OF AMOR: WHERE THE FOREST MURMURS</td></tr>
<tr><td align="right">VII.</td><td align="left">POEMS AND DRAMAS</td></tr>
</table></div>
<h4>ALSO UNIFORM WITH THE ABOVE</h4>
<h3>SELECTED WRITINGS<br />
OF WILLIAM SHARP</h3>
<p class="center">In Five Volumes</p>
<div class="center">
<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="">
<tr><td align="right">I.</td><td align="left">POEMS</td></tr>
<tr><td align="right">II.</td><td align="left">STUDIES AND APPRECIATIONS</td></tr>
<tr><td align="right">III.</td><td align="left">PAPERS CRITICAL AND REMINISCENT</td></tr>
<tr><td align="right">IV.</td><td align="left">LITERARY GEOGRAPHY AND TRAVEL SKETCHES</td></tr>
<tr><td align="right">V.</td><td align="left">VISTAS: GIPSY CHRIST AND OTHER PROSE IMAGININGS</td></tr>
</table></div>
<p class="center">AND<br />
MEMOIRS OF WILLIAM SHARP<br />
(<span class="smcap">Fiona Macleod</span>)</p>
<p class="center">Compiled by <span class="smcap">Mrs. William Sharp</span><br />
(In two volumes)</p>
<p class="center"><span class="smcap">LONDON</span>: W I L L I A M H E I N E M A N N</p></div>
<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> The Aztec word <i>Ehecatl</i>, which signifies alike the
Wind (or Breath), Shadow, and Soul.</p></div>
<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> A more polished later version, though attributed
to Columba, runs:—</p>
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">"An I mo chridhe, I mo <ins title="Transcriber's Note: Both mo 'ghraidh' and 'ghràidh' were used in this text. This was retained.">ghràidh</ins><br /></span>
<span class="i0">An àite guth mhanach bidh géum ba;<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Ach mu'n tig an saoghal gu crich,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Bithidh I mar a bha."<br /></span>
</div></div>
<p>
(In effect: <i>In Iona that is my heart's desire, Iona
that is my love, the lowing of cows shall yet replace the
voices of monks: but before the end is come Iona shall
again be as it was.</i>)</p></div>
<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> In a beautiful old Scoto-Gaelic ballad, the "Bàs
Fhraoich," occurs the line, <i>Thuit i air an tràigh na
neul</i>, "she fell on the shore as a mist," though here
finely used for a swoon only.</p></div>
<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> An allusion to the Hebridean proverb, <i>Ma dh'
itheas tu cridh an eòin, bidh do chridhe air chrith ri
d' bheò</i> ("If you eat the bird's heart, your heart will
palpitate for ever.")</p></div>
<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> The Irish pipes are called "Piob-theannaich" to
distinguish them from the "Piob" or "Piob-Mhòr"
of the Highlands.</p></div>
<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_6_6" id="Footnote_6_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> <i>The Dominion of Dreams</i>, 1st Ed.</p></div>
<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_7_7" id="Footnote_7_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> See Notes, p. <a href="#Page_429">429</a>.</p></div>
<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_8_8" id="Footnote_8_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8_8"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> <i>Vide</i> Notes, p. <a href="#Page_431">431</a>.</p></div>
<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_9_9" id="Footnote_9_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9_9"><span class="label">[9]</span></a> It is probably in the isles only that the pretty
word <i>Lunn-Bata</i> is used for <i>crā-all (creathall)</i>, a
cradle. It might best be rendered as boat-on-a-billow,
<i>lunn</i> being a heaving billow.</p></div>
<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_10_10" id="Footnote_10_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10_10"><span class="label">[10]</span></a> Pronounce mogh-rāy, mogh-rēe (my heart's
delight—<i>lit.</i> my dear one, my heart).</p></div>
<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_11_11" id="Footnote_11_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11_11"><span class="label">[11]</span></a> <i>Baille 'n Bad-a-sgailich</i>: the Farm of the Shadowy
Clump of Trees. <i>Cairstine</i>, or <i>Cairistine</i>, is the Gaelic
for <i>Christina</i> (for <i>Christian</i>), as <i>Tormaid</i> is for Norman,
and <i>Giorsal</i> for Grace. "The quiet havens" is the
beautiful island phrase for graves. Here, also, a swift
and fatal consumption that falls upon the doomed is
called "The White Fever." By "the mainland,"
Harris and the Lewis are meant.</p></div>
<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_12_12" id="Footnote_12_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12_12"><span class="label">[12]</span></a> <i>A cockall a' chridhe</i>: his heart out of its shell—a
phrase often used to express sudden derangement from
any shock. The ensuing phrase means the month from
the 15th of July to the 15th of August, <i>Mios crochaidh
nan con</i>, so called as it is supposed to be the hottest,
if not the most waterless, month in the isles. The
word <i>claar</i>, used below, is the name given a small
wooden tub, into which the potatoes are turned when
boiled.</p></div>
<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_13_13" id="Footnote_13_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_13_13"><span class="label">[13]</span></a> This hymn was taken down in the Gaelic and
translated by Mr. Alexander Carmichael of South
Uist.</p></div>
</div>
<pre>
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