The Works of Fiona Macleod Part 24

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.

But ... to the island-story once more!

Some day, surely, the historian of Iona will appear.

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.

What a book it will be! It will reveal to us the secret of what Oisn sang, what Merlin knew, what Columba dreamed, what Ad.a.m.nan 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 n.o.ble and the ign.o.ble 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 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 cheris.h.i.+ng forgotten symbols, sought here the fount of youth; and how, slowly, a long sleep fell upon the island, and only the gra.s.ses 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 pa.s.sed over its white sands, this little holy land! This little holy land! Ah, white doves, come again! A thousand thousand wait.

FOOTNOTES:

[2] A more polished later version, though attributed to Columba, runs:--

"An I mo chridhe, I mo ghraidh An aite guth mhanach bidh geum ba; Ach mu'n tig an saoghal gu crich, Bithidh I mar a bha."

(In effect: _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._)

[3] In a beautiful old Scoto-Gaelic ballad, the "Bas Fhraoich," occurs the line, _Thuit i air an traigh na neul_, "she fell on the sh.o.r.e as a mist," though here finely used for a swoon only.

[4] An allusion to the Hebridean proverb, _Ma dh' itheas tu cridh an ein, bidh do chridhe air chrith ri d' bhe_ ("If you eat the bird's heart, your heart will palpitate for ever.")

[5] The Irish pipes are called "Piob-theannaich" to distinguish them from the "Piob" or "Piob-Mhr" of the Highlands.

[6] _The Dominion of Dreams_, 1st Ed.

[7] See Notes, p. 429.

BY SUNDOWN Sh.o.r.eS

"_Cette ame qui se lamente En cette plaine dormante C'est la notre n'est-ce pas?

La mienne, dis, et la tienne, Dont s'exhale l'humble antienne Par ce tiede soir, tout, bas?_"

By Sundown Sh.o.r.es

"_'N hano ann Tad, ar Mab hac ar Spered-Zantel, Homan' zo'r ganaouenn zavet en Breiz-Izel!

Zavet gant eur paour-kez, en Ar-goat, en Ar-vor, Kanet anez-hi, pewienn, hac ho pezo digor._"

"In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit This song of mine was raised in my Breton Fatherland, In Argoat forest-clad, in Arvor of the grey wave: Sing it, wayfarers, and all gates will open before you."

I do not know the name of the obscure minstrel who sang this song, as he pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.s to the Land of Heart's Desire, which is their own land. This wandering Breton minstrel is of that company. His sone is familiar. I have heard it where Connemara breaks in grey rock and sudden pastures to the sea: where only the wind and 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 sundown sh.o.r.es, 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 _sone_ 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 sh.o.r.es, memorials of his destiny.

The ancient Gaels believed that in the western ocean there was an island called Hy Brasil, 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 Brasil of literature.

In the Celtic commune there are many legendary tales which, but for the accident of names and local circ.u.mstances, 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 Finistere, 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 mythopoeic tales there is a kindred character. Nomenoe may have been a Breton Fionn, though he had no Osin 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 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 Osin, old and blind, wandered at the last to Drumadoon in Arran, or if indeed he followed out of Erin the sweet voice from Tirnan-g, 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?

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 _The Shadow of Arvor_[8] there is an account of how Gradlon, "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 G.o.ds. 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 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 G.o.ds 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.

In the third book of St. Ad.a.m.nan's _Life of St. Columba_, there is an episode ent.i.tled "Of a manifestation of angels meeting the soul of 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.

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.

On the seventh day, when G.o.d rested, says a poet of the Gael, He dreamed of the lands and 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 Glas...o...b..ry. It takes nothing from, it adds much to these lands where spiritual ecstasy has longest dreamed, that the old G.o.ds 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 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.

It has occurred to me often of late, from what I have seen, and read, and heard from others, that the Celtic mythopoeic 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.

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 Osin of the Songs. From a ferryman on Loch Linnhe, near the falls of Lora, a friend heard a confused story of Osin (confused because the narrator at one moment spoke of Osin, and at another of "Goll"), how on the day that Christ was crucified Osin 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 what was being done in that hour "to the black sorrow of time and the universe (_domhain_)." 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 mult.i.tudes of those who at that moment were doing to death the innocent son of a king.

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 mythopoeic faculty which, in the Celtic imagination, is as a wing continually uplifting fallen dreams to the imaging wind of the Spirit.

FOOTNOTE:

[8] _Vide_ Notes, p. 431.

THE WIND, SILENCE, AND LOVE

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."

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 companions.h.i.+p. What is an abstraction to one is a reality to another: what to one has the proved familiar face, to another is illusion.

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 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 sh.o.r.es: may find a more intimate sound of home in the wind whispering in the gra.s.s, or when a sighing travels through the wilderness of leaves, or when an unseen wave moans in the pine.

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, n.o.bly ministrant, priests of the hidden way.

To go into solitary places, or among trees which await dusk and storm, or by a dark sh.o.r.e; to be a nerve there, to listen to, inwardly to hear, to be at one with, to be as gra.s.s 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, where Sound, of all else forgotten and forgetting, lives in the pale hyacinth, the moon-white pansy, the cloudy amaranth that gathers dew.

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 pa.s.sed, 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."