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.
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,
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.
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.
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
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.
FROM "GREEN FIRE"
_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._
F. M.
The Herdsman
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.
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.
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
would have been visible; nor was it, with a fair wind, more than an
hour's sail distant.
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.
In the island way, Seumas Carmichael replied that the people on Elleray,
the island adjacent to Rona, were unfriendly.
"But unfriendly at what?"
"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."
"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 Sgorr-Bhan on the other side of Borosay.
Who else is there?"
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 Sgorr-Dhu, a conical black rock at the south-east
end of the island, was reached, that the stone keep, known as
Caisteal-Rhona, came in sight.
It stands at the landward extreme of a rocky ledge, on the margin of a
green _airidh_. 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. 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.
Some of them reach an immense height. These are filled with a pale green
gloom which in fine weather, and at noon or toward sundown, 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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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 but feel
apprehensive on account of the strange ill-will that had shown itself at
Borosay.
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.
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.
One by one the men moved away, awkward in their embarrassment. Not one
came forward with outstretched hand, or said a word of welcome.
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.
"Giorsal," said Ian, turning in despair to his sister, "is it madness
that you have?"
But even she was no longer the same. Her eyes were fixed upon Alan with
a look of 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?"
"God forbid!" answered Giorsal Macdonald with white lips; "God forbid
that we look at the son of Ailean Carmichael askance. But----"
"But what?"
With that the woman put her apron over her head and moved away,
muttering strange words.
"Ian, what is this mystery?"
"How am I for knowing, Alan mac Ailean? It is all a darkness to me also.
But I will be finding that out soon."
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
Week after week passed, and to Alan it was as the going of the grey
owl's wing, swift and silent.
Then it was that, on a day of the days, he was suddenly stricken with a
new and startling dread.
II
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.
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 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.
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 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?
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 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.[13]
"A Mhicheil mhin! nan steud geala,
A choisin cios air Dragon fala,
Air ghaol Dia 'us Mhic Muire,
Sgaoil do sgiath oirnn dian sinn uile,
Sgaoil do sgiath oirnn dian sinn uile.
"A Mhoire ghradhach! Mathair Uain-ghil,
Cobhair oirnne, Oigh na h-uaisle;
A rioghainn uai'reach! a bhuachaille nan treud!
Cum ar cuallach cuartaich sinn le cheil,
Cum ar cuallach cuartaich sinn le cheil.
"A Chalum-Chille: chairdeil, chaoimh,
An ainm Athar, Mic, 'us Spioraid Naoimh,
Trid na Trithinn! trid na Triath!
Comraig sinne, gleidh ar trial,
Comraig sinne, gleidh ar trial.
"Athair! A Mhic! A Spioraid Naoimh!
Bi'eadh an Tri-Aon leinn, a la's a dh-oidhche!
'S air chul nan tonn, no air thaobh nan beann,
Bi'dh ar Mathair leinn, 's bith a lamh fo'r ceann,
Bi'dh ar Mathair leinn, 's bith a lamh fo'r ceann.
"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!
"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.
"Thou Columba, the friendly, the kind,
In name of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit Holy,
Through the Three-in-One, through the Three,
Encompass us, guard our procession,
Encompass us, guard our procession.
"Thou Father! thou Son! thou Spirit Holy!
Be the Three-in-One with us day and night.
And on the crested wave, or on the mountain side.
Our Mother is there, and her arm is under our head,
Our Mother is there, and her arm is under our head."
Alan found himself repeating whisperingly, and again and again--
"Bi 'eadh an Tri-Aon leinn, a la's a dh-oidhche!
'S air chul nan tonn, no air thaobh nam beann."
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.
"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.
"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?"
Suddenly the woman flashed her black eyes upon him.
"Have you ever heard of _am Buachaill Ban--am Buachaill Buidhe?_"
He looked at her in amaze. _Am Buachaill Ban!_ ... 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 _Bhuachaile nan
treud_--Shepherdess of the Flock. But it could be no allusion to either
of these that was intended.
"Who is the Herdsman of whom you speak, Morag?"
"Is it no knowledge you have of him at all, Alan MacAilean?"
"None. I know nothing of the man, nothing of what is in your mind. Who
is the Herdsman?"
"You will not be putting evil upon me because that you saw me here by
the pool before I saw you?"
"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 you, but only
good. The Blessing of Himself be upon you and yours and upon your
house!"
The woman looked relieved, but still cast her furtive gaze upon Alan,
who no longer attempted to join her.
"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."
"But tell me, Morag, who is the Herdsman of whom you speak?"
For a minute or more the woman stood regarding him intently. Then
slowly, and with obvious reluctance, she spoke--
"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?"
Alan stared at the woman. For a time he 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?
"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?"
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
_seun_ 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.
"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 he knows
nothing, and of the ill of which he is guiltless!"
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.
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.
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.