wasps, moths, and all winged insects. These settled upon the monks, who
moved not, but praised God in silence.
"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."
"Peace! Peace!" cried the monks, with one voice.
"In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost!" cried Colum
the White, glad because of the glory to God.
"_An ainn an Athar, 's an Mhic, 's an Spioraid Naoimh_," 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.
Oran and Keir testified to this thing, and all were full of awe and
wonder, and Colum praised God.
Then the saints and the brotherhood moved onward and went upon the
rocks. When all stood ankle-deep in the seaweed that was swaying in the
tide, Colum cried:
"O finny creatures of the deep, draw near!"
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.
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, _The
Herring is King_!
Then Colum said to the mackerel, "Sing the song that is upon you."
And the mackerel sang the song of the wild rovers of the sea, and the
lust of pleasure.
Then Colum said, "But for God's mercy, I would curse you, O false fish."
Then he spoke likewise to the dogfish, and the dogfish sang of slaughter
and the chase, and the joy of blood.
And Colum said, "Hell shall be your portion."
Then there was peace. And the herring said:
"In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost."
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:
"_An ain ann Athar, 's an Mhic, 's an Spioraid Naoimh!_"
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.
Then Colum 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.
That is how Sabbath came upon all living things upon Ioua that is
called Iona, and within the air above Ioua, and within the sea that is
around Ioua.
And the glory is Colum's.
To illustrate the history of the island I select the following episode
from _Barbaric Tales_. It deals with The Flight of the Culdees. The name
culdee is somewhat loosely used both by mediaeval 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 A.D. 800 or soon after.
On the wane of the moon, on the day following the ruin of Bail'-tiorail,
sails were seen far east of Stromness.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"Well," said Olaus the White grimly, "well, how did the Raven fly?"
"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 his men are all
fighting the sea-shadows by now."
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.
Sweno the Hammerer frowned a deep frown when he heard that Olaus was
there with only the _Svart-Alf_ out of the galleys which had gone the
southward way.
"If the islanders come upon us now with their birlinns we shall have to
make a running fight," he said.
Olaus laughed.
"Ay, but the running shall be after the birlinns, Sweno."
"I hear there are fifty and nine men of these Culdees yonder under the
sword-priest, Maoliosa?"
"It is a true word. But to-night, after the moon is up, there shall be
none."
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.
"Where is the woman Brenda that you took?" Olaus asked, as he stared at
Sweno's boat and saw no woman there.
"She is in the sea."
Olaus the White looked. It was his eyes that asked.
"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."
"She was a woman, Sweno--and none more fair in the isles, after Morna
that is mine."
"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."
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.
Olaus and Sweno stared across the fjord. At first they knew not what to
do. If Maoliosa 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?
At last it was clear. Sweno gave a great laugh.
"By the blood of Odin," he cried, "they come to sue for peace!"
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.
The vikings drew close to one another.
"Hail them in their own tongue, Sweno," said Olaus.
The Hammerer moved to the water-edge, as the birlinn stopped, a short
arrow-flight away.
"Ho, there, priests of the Christ-faith!"
"What would you, viking?" It was Maoliosa himself that spoke.
"Why do you come here among us, you that are Maoliosa?"
"To win you and yours to God, Pagan."
"Is it madness that is upon you, old man? We have swords and spears
here, if we lack hymns and prayers."
All this time Olaus kept a wary watch inland and seaward, for he feared
that Maoliosa came because of an ambush.
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.
"Arrows!" cried Olaus.
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.
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.
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 into the sea. A
culdee thrust at him with an oar, and pinned him among the sea-tangle.
Thus died Sweno the Hammerer.
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.
"Let forty men follow," he cried.
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.
Soon there were fewer than a score--then twelve only--ten!
"Bring them back!" Olaus shouted.
When the ten fugitives were captured and brought back, Olaus took the
crucifix that Maoliosa had raised, and held it before each in turn.
"Smite!" he said to the first monk. But the man would not.
"Smite!" he said to the second; but he would not. And so it was to the
tenth.
"Good!" said Olaus the White; "they shall witness to their God."
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.
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.
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.[6] 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.
When Artan had kissed the brow of every white-robed brother on Iona, and
had been thrice kissed by the aged Colum, his heart was filled with
gladness.
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.
"You have the bitter fever of youth upon you, Artan," said Colum, as
they crossed the dunes beyond Dun-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."
"And when I come again, there will be clappings of hands, and hymns,
and many rejoicings?"
"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, Artan, my son?"
"Ay, a great joy," answered the young monk, but with his eyes dreaming
away from his words.
Silence was between them as they neared the cove where a large coracle
lay, with three men in it.
"Will God be coming to Iona when I am away?" asked Artan.
Colum stared at him.
"Is it likely that God would come here in a coracle?" he asked, with
scornful eyes.
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. Artan wondered if the place he was going to was too far north for
him to see that greatness; but he feared to ask.
"Give me a new name," he asked; "give me a new name, my father."
"What name will you have?"
"Servant of Mary."
"So be it, Artan Gille-Mhoire."
With that Colum kissed him and bade farewell, and Artan sat down in the
coracle, and covered his head with his mantle, and wept and prayed.
The last word he heard was, _Peace_!
"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 _Cruitne_, who know nothing of that blessing of
the blessings."
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.
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.
"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.
A sudden current caught the boat, and it began to drift towards great
reefs white with ceaseless torn streams.
Thorkeld leaned from the helm, and shouted to the two Picts. They did
not stir, but sat staring, idle with fear.
Artan knew now that it was as Colum had said. God would give him glory
soon.
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 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.
So Artan let the wind take his broken hymn, and he made a song of his
own, and sang:
O Heavenly Mary, Queen of the Elements,
And you, Brigit the fair with the little harp,
And all the saints, and all the old gods
(And it is not one of them I'd be disowning),
Speak to the Father, that he may save us from drowning.
Then seeing that the boat drifted closer, he sang again:
Save us from the rocks and the sea, Queen of Heaven!
And remember that I am a Culdee of Iona,
And that Colum has sent me to the _Cruitne_
To sing them the song of peace lest they be damned for ever!
Thorkeld laughed at that.
"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."
"You will burn in hell for that," said Artan, the holy zeal warm at his
heart.
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.
One of the dark men stood, holding the mast. His eyes shone. Thick words
swung from his lips like seaweed thrown out of a hollow by an ebbing
wave.
The coracle swerved, and the four men were wet with the heavy spray.
Thorkeld put his oar in the water, and the swaying craft righted.
"Glory to God," said Artan.
"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."
"That is a true thing," thought Artan. He wondered if it was because he
had not sung his hymn in the holy Latin.
When the last flame died out of the west, and the stars came like sheep
gathering at the call of the shepherd, Artan remembered that he had not
said his prayers and sang the vesper hymn.
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.
Suddenly he touched Thorkeld.
"Tell me," he said, "how far north has the Cross of Christ come?"
"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."
"Who pulled him into the sea?"
Thorkeld stared into the running wave. He had no words.
Artan lay still for a long while.
"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."
Then he spoke to the man who had sung.
"Do you know of Mary, and God, and the Son, and the Spirit?"
"You have too many Gods, Culdee," answered 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."
Artan frowned.
"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?"
"How long have they been in Iona, White-Robe?"
The man spoke scornfully. Artan knew they had not been there many years.
He had no words.
"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."
"They were coming there," answered Artan confusedly. "It is a long, long
way from--from--from the place they were sailing from."
Necta listened sullenly.
"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 man Darach, who was staring at the moon and
muttering words that neither Artan nor Thorkeld knew.
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.
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.
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.
Balva the old monk I am called: when I was young, Balva Honeymouth.
That was before Colum the White came to Iona in the West.
She whom I loved was a woman whom I won out of the South.
And I had a good heaven with my lips on hers and with breast to
breast.
Balva the old monk I am called: were it not for the fear
That the soul of Colum the White would meet my soul in the Narrows
That sever the living and dead, I would rise up from here,
And go back to where men pray with spears and arrows.
Balva the old monk I am called: ugh! ugh! the cold bell of the
matins--'tis dawn!
Sure it's a dream I have had that I was in a warm wood with the sun
ashine,
And that against me in the pleasant greenness was a soft fawn,
And a voice that whispered "Balva Honeymouth, drink, I am thy wine!"
As I write,[7] here on the hill-slope of Dun-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 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
seafowl--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.