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 sgadan nor his tribe, nor the narwhal. There
are no men of the human clans there, and no shores, and the tides are
forbidden.
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 Sidhe 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
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 Sidhe go to refresh their deathless life.
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."
They have not yet come.
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 Sidhe. 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.
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 Ealasaidh, or Elsie as it is generally given in English, and I
wanted to see her even more than the old woman.
"Where is Elsie?" I asked, after our greetings were done.
Giorsal looked at me sidelong, and then shifted the kettle, and busied
herself with the teapot.
I repeated the question.
"She is gone," the old woman said, without looking at me.
"Gone? Where has she gone to?"
"I might as well ask you to tell me that."
"Is she married ... had she a lover ... or ... or ... do you mean that
she ... that you ... have lost her?"
"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."
"But, Giorsal, she must have left Iona and gone to Mull, or maybe gone
away in a steamer, or----"
"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."
"And what do _you_ say, Giorsal?"
The old woman went to the door, looked out, and closed it. When she
returned, she put another bit on the fire, and kept her gaze on the red
glow.
"Do you know much about them old Iona monks?" she asked abruptly.
"What old monks?"
"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."
I waited, silent.
"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 Siol
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."
"Friends?"
"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 Sgeur
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 _them_.
It's ill to any that brings harm on _them_. 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.
'_Breisleach_!' 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."
"And----"
"An' that's all. Here's the tea. Ay, an' for sure here's my good man.
_Whist_, now! Rob, do you see who's here?"
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.
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 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.
Doubtless the story came by way of the Shannon to the Loch of Shadows,
or from Cuchullin's land to Dun Sobhairce on the Antrim coast, and
thence to the Scottish mainland. In wandering to the isles, it lost
something both of Eire 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 distant Barra or Uist, in Coll
or Tiree, "buried" Mary in a cave of Icolmkill.
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.
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 chlarsach dut," "Pity on him
who would burn the harp for you."
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
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"[5] 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.
The legendary history of Iona would be as much Pagan as Christian.
To-day, at many a _ceilidh_ by the warm hearths in winter, one may hear
allusions to the Scandinavian pirates, or to their more ancient and
obscure kin, the Fomor.... The Fomor or Fomorians were a people that
lived before the Gael, and had their habitations on the isles: fierce
prowlers of the sea, who loved darkness and 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.
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," _somerledi_,
which survives as Somerled. Many Macleods and Macdonalds are called
Somerled, Torquil (also Torcall, Thorkill), and Manus (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 Suderoeer.
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 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--_Donnalaich chon
chinain_.
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 _The Three
Marvels of Iona_, 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 to its present use by
running into it part of another Columban tale, I add now.
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.
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.
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.
This man's name was Ardan, and he was of the ancient people. He had come
to Iona because of two things. Maolmor, the king of the northern Picts,
had sent him to learn of Colum what was this god-teaching he had brought
out of Eire: and for himself he had come when old age was upon him, to
see what 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.
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.
In the first hour they talked of God.
"Ay, sure: and now," said the saint, "O Ardan the wise, is my God thy
God?"
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 Maolmor 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."
In the second hour they talked of Man. While Ardan spoke, Colum smiled
in his deep, grey eyes.
"It is for laughter that," he said, when Ardan ceased.
"And why will that be, O Colum Cille?" Ardan asked. Then the smile went
out of Colum's grey eyes, and he turned and looked about him.
He saw near, a crow, a horse, and a hound.
"These are thy brethren," he said scornfully.
But Ardan answered quietly, "Even so."
The third hour they talked about the beasts of the earth and the fowls
of the air.
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.
That eve, Ardan of the Picts sat with the monks of Iona.
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:
O Colum and monks of Christ,
It is peace we are having this night:
Sure, peace is a good thing,
And I am glad with the gladness.
We worship one God,
Though ye call him Dia--
And I say not, O De!
But cry _Bea'uil Bel_!
For it is one faith for man,
And one for the living world,
And no man is wiser than another--
And none knoweth much.
None knoweth a better thing than this:
The Sword, Love, Song, Honour, Sleep.
None knoweth a surer thing than this:
Birth, Sorrow, Pain, Weariness, Death.
Sure, peace is a good thing;
Let us be glad of peace:
We are not men of the Sword,
But of the Rune and the Wisdom.
I have learned a truth of Colum,
And he hath learned of me:
All ye on the morrow shall see
A wonder of the wonders.
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.
It stood grey and wan beside him.
"What art thou, O Spirit?" he said.
"I am thy Sleep, Colum."
"And is it peace?"
"It is peace."
"What wouldst thou?"
"I have wisdom. Thy mind and thy soul were closed. I could not give what
I brought. I brought wisdom."
"Give it."
"Behold!"
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....
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 sun-down. 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.
"Holy One!" said Oran in a low voice, soft with pity and awe; "Holy
One!"
But Colum took no notice. His lips still moved, and the tangled hairs
below his nether lip shivered with his failing breath.
"Father!" said Keir, tender as a woman; "Father!"
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.
"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."
"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."
Then it was that Colum rose, and walked slowly towards the wall.
"Little black beast," he said to the fly that droned its drowsy hum and
moved not at all; "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!"
At that the fly flew heavily from the wall, and slowly circled round and
round the head of Colum the White.
"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.
"It is a fiend," said Oran.
"It is an angel," said Keir.
Thereupon the fly settled upon the wall again, and again droned his
drowsy hot hum.
"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!"
"_An ainn an Athar, 's an Mhic, 's an Spioraid Naoimh_," repeated Oran
below his breath.
"_An ainn an Athar, 's an Mhic, 's an Spioraid Naoimh_," repeated Keir
below his breath.
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:
Praise be to God, and a blessing too at that, and a blessing!
For Colum the White, Colum the Dove, hath worshipped;
Yea, he hath worshipped and made of a desert a garden,
And out of the dung of men's souls have made a sweet savour of
burning.
A savour of burning, most sweet, a fire for the altar,
This he hath made in the desert; the hell-saved all gladden.
Sure he hath put his benison, too, on milch-cow and bullock,
On the fowls of the air, and the man-eyed seals, and the otter.
But high in His Dun in the great blue mainland of heaven,
God the All-Father broodeth, where the harpers are harping His
glory:
There where He sitteth, where a river of ale poureth ever,
His great sword broken, His spear in the dust, He broodeth.
And this is the thought that moves in his brain, as a cloud filled
with thunder
Moves through the vast hollow sky filled with the dust of the
stars--
"What boots it the glory of Colum, when he maketh a Sabbath to bless
me,
And hath no thought of my sons in the deeps of the air and the sea?"
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.
Oran said in a low voice of awe, "O God, our God!"
Keir whispered, white with fear, "O God, my God!"
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!"
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.
Then, when he was weary, peace came into his heart, and he sighed
"_Amen_!"
"Amen!" said Oran the monk.
"Amen!" said Keir the monk.
"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."
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.
On the morrow, when the sun was yellow on the brown seaweed, and there
was peace on the isle and upon the waters, Colum and the brotherhood
went slowly towards the sea.
At the meadows that are close to the sea, the saint stood still. All
bowed their heads.
"O winged things of the air," cried Colum, "draw near!"