took a man from Gometra to help with an oar--his recommendation being
that he was "cho laidir 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 Oisin
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 Coolins.
The most obvious meaning of the name _Cuilfhion_ (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 _Ku' l'-unn_ or _coolin_. This is most probably the origin
of the name.
In fine weather one may see from Iona the Coolins 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 Oisin passed that way
with Malvina: since Cuchullin learned the feats of war at Dun 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
Sgathaith (_sky-ah_), 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.
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 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
Sgayah 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.
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 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.
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 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 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."
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.
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.
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.
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:--
"It was well thou hadst the horse of the god Micheil
Who goes without a bit in his mouth,
So that thou couldst ride him through the fields of the air,
And with him leap over the knowledge of Nature"--
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 shealing-hymn the three powers
who 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 Uain ghil," "Mother of the White
Lamb," as the tender Gaelic has it, who is so beautifully called the
golden-haired Virgin Shepherdess.
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.
I may give the whole hymn in English, as rendered by Mr. Carmichael:
I
"Thou gentle Michael of the white steed,
Who subdued the Dragon of blood,
For love of God and the Son of Mary,
Spread over us thy wing, shield us all!
Spread over us thy wing, shield us all!
II
"Mary beloved! Mother of the White Lamb,
Protect us, thou Virgin of nobleness,
Queen of beauty! Shepherdess of the flocks!
Keep our cattle, surround us together,
Keep our cattle, surround us together.
III
"Thou Columba, the friendly, the kind,
In name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,
Through the Three-in-One, through the Three,
Encompass us, guard our procession,
Encompass us, guard our procession.
IV
"Thou Father! Thou Son! Thou Holy Spirit!
Be the Three-One with us day and night,
On the machair plain, on the mountain ridge,
The Three-one is with us, with His arm around our head,
The Three-One is with us, with his arm around our head."
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."
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
"My soul is with the Light on the mountains,
Archangel Micheil shield my soul!"
now go or stand in a scornful or heedless silence, or without
remembrance, as others did who forgot to trim their lamps.
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:
"I place this flock before me
As ordained by the King of the World,
Mary Virgin to keep them, to wait them, to watch them.
On hill and glen and plain,
On hill, in glen, on plain."
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 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.
But even in what may more fairly be called superstitious, have we surety
that we have done well in our exchange?
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:
"From rocks, from snow-wreaths, from streams,
From crooked ways, from destructive pits,
From the arrows of the slim fairy women,
From the heart of envy, the eye of evil,
Keep us, Holy St. Bride."
"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 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.
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 Dun-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.
"The protection of God and Columba
Encompass your going and coming,
And about you be the milkmaid of the smooth white palms,
Briget of the clustering hair, golden brown."
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
In my legendary story I tell of how one called Dughall, of a kingly
line, sailing from Ireland, came to be cast upon the ocean-shore of
Iona, then called Innis-nan-Dhruidhneach, 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.
When, warmed by the sun, they rose, they found themselves in a waste
place. Dughall 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.
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
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:
"I am but a little child,
Dughall, son of Hugh, son of Art,
But my garment shall be laid
On the lord of the world,
Yea, surely it shall be that He,
The King of Elements Himself,
Shall lean against my bosom,
And I will give him peace,
And peace will I give to all who ask
Because of this mighty Prince,
And because of his Mother that is the Daughter of Peace."
And while Dughall 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 Dughall aside and
questioned him. It was not till the third day that the old man gave his
decision. Dughall 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 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 Duvach. The child,
too, was to be named Bride, for that was the way the name Briget is
called in the Erse of the Isles.
To the question of Dughall, that was thenceforth Duvach, 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, Duvach, 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 the fulness of time the prophecy shall be
fulfilled."
So was it, from that day of the days. Duvach 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 Duvach 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 Duvach the herdsman was Dughall
Donn, of a princely race in Innisfail.
In the end, too, Duvach 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 bandia, 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 Dun-I singing these self-same words. Her eyes 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.
Bride lived the hours of her days upon the slopes of Dun-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.
But when the middle of the year came that was (though Duvach 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.
So one day, before the Great Fire of the Summer Festival, Conn and his
brothers reproached Bride.
"Idle are these pure eyes, O Bride, not to be as lamps at thy
marriage-bed."
"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.
Trembling with awe at this portent, Duvach intervened:
"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."
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.