his youth, he had loved that nightly watch on the constellations. Now,
as then, in the pulse of the planets he found assurances which faith had
not given him. In the vast majestic order of that nocturnal march, that
diurnal retreat, he had learned the law of the whirling leaf and the
falling star, of the slow aeon-delayed comet and of the slower wane of
solar fires. Looking with visionary eyes into that congregation of
stars, he realised, not the littleness of the human dream, but its
divine impulsion. It was only when, after long vigils into the quietudes
of night, he turned his gaze from the palaces of the unknown, and
thought of the baffled fretful swarming in the cities of men, that his
soul rose in revolt against the sublime ineptitude of man's spiritual
leaguer against destiny.
Destiny--"An Dan"--it was a word familiar to him since childhood, when
first he had heard it on the lips of old Ian Macdonald. And once, on the
eve of the Feast of Paschal, when Alan had asked Daniel Dare what was
the word which the stars spelled from zenith to nadir, the Astronomer
had turned and answered simply, "_C'est le Destin_."
But Alan was of the few to whom this talismanic word opens lofty
perspectives, even while it obscures those paltry vistas which we deem
unending and dignify with vain hopes and void immortalities.
_To live in Beauty is to sum up in four words all the spiritual
aspiration of the soul of man._--F. M.
A DREAM
_To G. R. S. MEAD_
_Our thought, our consciousness, is but the scintillation of a wave:
below us is a moving shadow, our brief forecast and receding way;
beneath the shadow are depths sinking into depths, and then the
unfathomable unknown._--F. M.
A Dream
I was on a vast, an illimitable plain, where the dark blue horizons were
sharp as the edges of hills. It was the world, but there was nothing in
the world. There was not a blade of grass nor the hum of an insect, nor
the shadow of a bird's wing. The mountains had sunk like waves in the
sea when there is no wind; the barren hills had become dust. Forests had
become the fallen leaf; and the leaf had passed. I was aware of one who
stood beside me, though that knowledge was of the spirit only; and my
eyes were filled with the same nothingness as I beheld above and beneath
and beyond. I would have thought I was in the last empty glens of Death,
were it not for a strange and terrible sound that I took to be the voice
of the wind coming out of nothing, travelling over nothingness and
moving onward into nothing.
"There is only the wind," I said to myself in a whisper.
Then the voice of the dark Power beside me, whom in my heart I knew to
be Dalua, the Master of Illusions, said: "Verily, this is your last
illusion."
I answered: "It is the wind."
And the voice answered: "That is not the wind that you hear, for the
wind is dead. It is the empty, hollow echo of my laughter."
Then, suddenly, he who was beside me lifted up a small stone, smooth as
a pebble of the sea. It was grey and flat, and yet to me had a terrible
beauty because it was the last vestige of the life of the world.
The Presence beside me lifted up the stone and said: "It is the end."
And the horizons of the world came in upon me like a rippling shadow.
And I leaned over darkness and saw whirling stars. These were gathered
up like leaves blown from a tree, and in a moment their lights were
quenched, and they were further from me than grains of sand blown on a
whirlwind of a thousand years.
Then he, that terrible one, Master of Illusions, let fall the stone, and
it sank into the abyss and fell immeasurably into the infinite. And
under my feet the world was as a falling wave, and was not. And I fell,
though without sound, without motion. And for years and years I fell
below the dim waning of light; and for years and years I fell through
universes of dusk; and for years and years and years I fell through the
enclosing deeps of darkness. It was to me as though I fell for
centuries, for aeons, for unimaginable time. I knew I had fallen beyond
time, and that I inhabited eternity, where were neither height, nor
depth, nor width, nor space.
But, suddenly, without sound, without motion, I stood steadfast upon a
vast ledge. Before me, on that ledge of darkness become rock, I saw this
stone which had been lifted from the world of which I was a shadow,
after shadow itself had died away. And as I looked, this stone became
fire and rose in flame. Then the flame was not. And when I looked the
stone was water; it was as a pool that did not overflow, a wave that did
not rise or fall, a shaken mirror wherein nothing was troubled.
Then, as dew is gathered in silence, the water was without form or
colour or motion. And the stone seemed to me like a handful of earth
held idly in the poise of unseen worlds. What I thought was a green
flame rose from it, and I saw that it had the greenness of grass, and
had the mystery of life. The green herb passed as green grass in a
drought; and I saw the waving of wings. And I saw shape upon shape, and
image upon image, and symbol upon symbol. Then I saw a man, and he,
too, passed; and I saw a woman, and she, too, passed; and I saw a child,
and the child passed. Then the stone was a Spirit. And it shone there
like a lamp. And I fell backward through deeps of darkness, through
unimaginable time.
And when I stood upon the world again it was like a glory. And I saw the
stone lying at my feet.
And One said: "Do you not know me, brother?"
And I said: "Speak, Lord."
And Christ stooped and kissed me upon the brow.
NOTES
_Unity does not lie in the emotional life of expression which we
call Art, which discerns it; it does not lie in nature, but in the
Soul of man._--F. M.
Notes to First Edition
THE DIVINE ADVENTURE
When "The Divine Adventure" appeared in the _Fortnightly Review_ in
November and December last, I received many comments and letters. From
these I infer that my present readers will also be of two sections,
those who understand at once why, in this symbolical presentment, I
ignore the allegorical method--and those who, accustomed to the
artificial method of allegory, would rather see this "story of a soul"
told in that method, without actuality, or as an ordinary essay stript
of narrative.
But each can have only his own way of travelling towards a desired goal.
I chose my way, because in no other, as it seemed to me, could I convey
what I wanted to convey. Is it so great an effort of the imagination to
conceive of the Mind and Soul actual as the Body is actual? And is there
any tragic issue so momentous, among all the tragic issues of life, as
the problem of the Spirit, the Mind--the Will as I call it; that
problem as to whether it has to share the assured destiny of the Body,
or the desired and possible destiny of the Soul? There is no spiritual
tragedy so poignant as this uncertainty of the Will, the Spirit, what we
call the thinking part of us, before the occult word of the Soul,
inhabiting here but as an impatient exile, and the inevitable end of
that Body to which it is so intimately allied, with which are its
immediate, and in a sense its most vital interests, and in whose
mortality it would seem to have a dreadful share.
The symbolist, unlike the allegorist, cannot disregard the actual, the
reality as it seems: he must, indeed, be supremely heedful of this
reality as it seems. The symbolist or the mystic (properly they are one)
abhors the vague, what is called the "mystical": he is supremely a
realist, but his realism is of the spirit and the imagination, and not
of externals, or rather not of these merely, for there, too, he will not
disregard actuality, but make it his base, as the lark touches the solid
earth before it rises where it can see both Earth and Heaven and sing a
song that partakes of each and belongs to both. "In the kingdom of the
imagination the ideal must ever be faithful to the general laws of
nature," wrote one of the wisest of mystics. Art is pellucid mystery,
and the only spiritually logical interpretation of life; and her
inevitable language is Symbol--by which (whether in colour, or form, or
sound, or word, or however the symbol be translated) a spiritual image
illumines a reality that the material fact narrows or obscures.
For the rest, "The Divine Adventure" is an effort to solve, or obtain
light upon, the profoundest human problem. It is by looking inward that
we shall find the way outward. The gods--and what we mean by the
gods--the gods seeking God have ever penetrated the soul by two roads,
that of nature and that of art. Edward Calvert put it supremely well
when he said "I go inward to God: outward to the gods." It was Calvert
also who wrote:--
"To charm the truthfulness of eternal law into a guise which it has not
had before, and clothe the invention with expression, this is the magic
with which the poet would lead the listener into a world of his own, and
make him sit down in the charmed circle of his own gods."
_Page 96. The Felire na Naomh Nerennach_ (so spelt, more phonetically
than correctly) is an invaluable early "Chronicle of Irish Saints."
Uladh--or Ulla--is the Gaelic for Ulster, though the ancient boundaries
were not the same as those of the modern province; and at periods Uladh
stood for all North Ireland. Tara in the south was first the capital of
a kingdom, and later the federal capital. Thus, at the beginning of the
Christian era, Concobar mac Nessa was both King of the Ultonians (the
clans of Uladh) and Ard-Righ or High-King of Ireland, a nominal
suzerainty.
The name of Mochaoi's abbacy, _n' Aondruim_, was in time anglicised to
Antrim.
The characteristic Gaelic passage quoted in English at p. 98 is not from
the _Felire na Naomh Nerennach_, but from a Hebridean source: excerpted
from one of the many treasures-troves rescued from extant or recently
extant Gaelic lore by Mr. Alexander Carmichael, all soon to be published
(the outcome of a long life of unselfish devotion) under the title _Or
agus Ob_, though we may be sure that there will be little "dross" and
much "gold."
_Page 101._ The allusion is to the story or sketch called "The Book of
the Opal" in _The Dominion of Dreams_: a sketch true in essentials, but
having at its close an arbitrary interpolation of external symbolism
which I now regret as superfluous. I have since realised that the only
living and convincing symbol is that which is conceived of the spirit
and not imagined by the mind. My friend's life, and end, were strange
enough--and significant enough--without the effort to bring home to
other minds by an arbitrary formula what should have been implicit.
_Page 102._ I have again and again, directly or indirectly, since my
first book _Pharais_ to the repeated record in this book, alluded to
Seumas Macleod; and as I have shown in "Barabal," here, and in the
dedication to this book, it is to the old islander and to my Hebridean
nurse, Barabal, that I owe more than to any other early influences. For
those who do not understand the character of the Island-Gael, or do not
realise that all Scotland is not Presbyterian, it may be as well to add
that many of the islesmen are of the Catholic faith (broadly, the
Southern Hebrides are wholly Catholic), and that therefore the brooding
imagination of an old islander--who spoke Gaelic only, and had never
visited the mainland--might the more readily dwell upon Mary the Mother:
Mary of the Lamb, Mary the Shepherdess, as she is lovingly called. I do
not, for private reasons, name the island where he lived: but I have
written of him, or of what he said, nothing but what was so, or was thus
said. He had suffered much, and was lonely: but was, I think, the
happiest, and, I am sure, the wisest human being I have known. What I
cannot now recall is whether his belief in Mary's Advent was based on an
old prophecy, or upon a faith of his own dreams and visions, coloured by
the visions and dreams of a like mind and longing: perhaps, and
likeliest, upon both. I was not more than seven years old when that
happened of which I have written on p. 102, and so recall with surety
only that which I saw and heard.
I am glad to know that another is hardly less indebted to old Seumas
Macleod. I am not permitted to mention his name, but a friend and
kinsman allows me to tell this: that when he was about sixteen he was on
the remote island where Seumas lived, and on the morrow of his visit
came at sunrise upon the old man, standing looking seaward with his
bonnet removed from his long white locks; and upon his speaking to
Seumas (when he saw he was not "at his prayers") was answered, in Gaelic
of course, "Every morning like this I take off my hat to the beauty of
the world."
The untaught islander who could say this had learned an ancient wisdom,
of more account than wise books, than many philosophies.
Let me tell one other story of him, which I have meant often to tell,
but have as often forgotten. He had gone once to the Long Island, with
three fishermen, in their herring-coble. The fish had been sold, and the
boat had sailed southward to a Lews haven where Seumas had a relative.
The younger men had "hanselled" their good bargain overwell, and were
laughing and talking freely, as they walked up the white road from the
haven. Something was said that displeased Seumas greatly, and he might
have spoken swiftly in reproof; but just then a little naked child ran
laughing from a cottage, chased by his smiling mother. Seumas caught up
the child, who was but an infant, and set him in their midst, and then
kneeled and said the few words of a Hebridean hymn beginning:--
"Even as a little child
Most holy, pure...."
No more was said, but the young men understood; and he who long
afterward told me of this episode added that though he had often since
acted weakly and spoken foolishly, he had never, since that day, uttered
foul words. Another like characteristic anecdote of Seumas (as the
skipper who made his men cease mocking a "fool") I have told in the tale
called "The Amadan" in the _The Dominion of Dreams_.
I could write much of this revered friend--so shrewd and genial and
worldly-wise, for all his lonely life; so blithe in spirit and swiftly
humorous; himself a poet, and remembering countless songs and tales of
old; strong and daring, on occasion; good with the pipes, as with the
nets; seldom angered, but then with a fierce anger, barbaric in its
vehemence; a loyal clansman; in all things, good and not so good, a Gael
of the Isles.
But since I have not done so, not gathered into one place, I add this
note.
_Page 113._ The kingdom of the Suderoeer (_i.e._ Southern Isles) was the
Norse name for the realm of the Hebrides and Inner Hebrides when the
Isles were under Scandinavian dominion.
_Page 118._ The ignorance or supineness which characterises so many
English writers on Celtic history is to be found even among Highland
and Irish clerics and others who have not taken the trouble to study or
even become acquainted with their own ancient literature, but fallen
into the foolish and discreditable conventionalism which maintains that
before Columban or in pre-Christian days the Celtic race consisted of
wholly uncivilised and broken tribes, rivals only in savagery.
How little true that is; as wide of truth as the statements that the far
influences of Iona ceased with the death of Columba. Not only was the
island for two centuries thereafter (in the words of an eminent
historian) "the nursery of bishops, the centre of education, the asylum
of religious knowledge, the place of union, the capital and necropolis
of the Celtic race," but the spiritual colonies of Iona had everywhere
leavened western Europe. Charlemagne knew and reverenced "this little
people of Iona," who from a remote island in the wild seas beyond the
almost as remote countries of Scotland and England had spread the Gospel
everywhere. Not only were many monasteries founded by monks from Iona in
the narrower France of that day, but also in Lorraine, Alsatia, in
Switzerland, and in the German states; in distant Bavaria even, no
fewer than sixteen were thus founded. In the very year the Danes made
their first descent on the doomed island, a monk of Iona was Bishop of
Tarento in Italy. In a word, in that day, Iona was the brightest gem in
the spiritual crown of Rome.
_Page 128._ The "little-known namesake of my own" alluded to is Fiona,
or Fionaghal Macleod, known (in common with her more famous sister Mary)
by the appellation _Nighean Alasdair Ruadh_, "Daughter of Alasdair the
Red," was born _circa_ 1575.
_Page 130._ Columba, whose house-name was Crimthan, "Wolf"--surviving in
our Scoto-Gaelic MacCrimmon--who was of royal Irish blood and, through
his mother of royal Scottish (Pictish) blood also, came to Iona in A.D.
563, when he was in his forty-second year. At that date, St. Augustine,
"the English Columba," had not yet landed in Kent--that more famous
event occurring thirty-four years later. In this year of 563, the East
had not yet awakened to its wonderful dream that to-day has in number
more dreamers than the Cross of Christ; for it was not till six years
later, when Columba was on a perilous mission of conversion among the
Picts, that Mahomet was born. In 563, when Colum landed on Iona, the
young Italian priest who was afterwards to be called the Architect of
the Church and to become famous as Pope Gregory the Great, was dreaming
his ambitious dreams; and farther East, in Constantinople, then the
capital of the Western World, the great Roman Emperor Justinian was
laying the foundation of modern law.
With the advent of Charlemagne, two hundred years later, "the old world"
passed. When the ninth century opened, the great Gregory's dearest hopes
were in the dust where his bones lay; Justinian's metropolis was fallen
from her pride; and, on Iona, the heathen Danes drank to Odin.
_Page 136._ The _Mor-Rigan_. This euphemerised Celtic queen is called by
many names: even those resembling that just given vary much--_Morrigu_,
_Mor Reega_, _Morrigan_, _Morgane_, _Mur-ree (Mor Ree)_, etc. The old
word _Mor-Rigan_ means "the great queen." She is the mother of the
Gaelic Gods, as _Bona Dea_ of the Romans. "_Anu_ is her name," says an
ancient writer. Anu suckled the elder gods. Her name survives in
_Tuatha-De-Danann_, in _Danu_, _Ana_, and perhaps in that mysterious
Scoto-Gaelic name, Teampull _Anait_--the temple of Anait--whom some
writers collate with an ancient Asiatic goddess, Anait (see p. 171). It
has been suggested that the Celts gave _Bona Dea_ to the Romans, for
these considered her Hyperborean. A less likely derivation of the
popular "_Morrigu_" is that _Mor Reega_ is _Mor Reagh_ (wealth).
Keating, it may be added, speaks of Monagan, Badha, and Macha as the
three chief goddesses of the Divine Race of Ana (the Tuatha De Danann).
Students of Celtic mythology and legend, and of the Tain-bo-Cuailgne in
particular, will remember that her white bull "Find-Bennach" was
"antagonist" to the famous brown bull of Cuailgne. The Mor Rigan has
been identified with Cybele--as the Goddess of Prosperity: but only
speculatively. Another name of the Mother of all Gods is _Aine (Anu?)_.
Prof. Rhys says _Ri_ or _Roi_ was the Mother of the gods of the
non-Celtic races. It is suggestive that _Ana_ is a Phoenician word: that
people had a (virgin?) goddess named _Ana-Perema_.
_Page 156._ _Finn_--_Oisin_--_Oscur_--_Gaul_--_Diarmid_--_Cuchullin_.
These names as they stand exhibit the uncertainty of Gaelic
name-spelling. In the case of the first named there is constant
variation. The oldest writing is Find (also Fend), or Fin. Some Gaelic
writers prefer, in modern use, Fionn. Through a misapprehension,
Macpherson popularised the name in Scotland as Fingal, and the _Fein_
and _Fianna_ (for they are not the same, as commonly supposed, the
former being the Clan or People of Finn, and the latter a kind of
militia raised for the defence of Uladh), as the Fingalians. Some Irish
critics have been severe upon Macpherson's "impossible nomenclature";
but _Fingal_ is not "impossible," though it is certainly not old Gaelic
for Finn--for the word can quite well stand for Fair Stranger, and might
well have been a name given to a Norse (or for that matter a Gaelic)
champion.
_Fin MacCumhal_ (Fin MacCooal or MacCool) is now commonly rendered as
Finn or Fionn. The latter is good Gaelic and the finer word, but the
other is older. Fionn obtains more in Gaelic Scotland. _Fingal_ and the
_Fingalians_ are modern, and due solely to the great vogue given by
Macpherson--though many writers and even Gaelic speakers have adopted
them.
Fionn's famous son, again, is almost universally (outside Gaelic
Scotland and Ireland) known as Ossian, because of Macpherson's spelling
of the name. Neither the Highland nor Irish Gaels pronounce it so--but
Oshshen, and the like--best represented by the Gaelic _Oisin_ or Oisein.
Personally I prefer Oisin to any other spelling; but perhaps it would be
best if the word were uniformly spelt in the manner in which it is
universally familiar. Obviously, too, "Ossianic" is the only suitable
use of the name in adjective form. _Oscur_ is probably merely a Gaelic
spelling of the Norse Oscar; though I recollect a student of ancient
Gaelic names telling me that the name was Gaelic and only resembled the
familiar Scandinavian word. _Gaul_ is commonly so spelt; but Goll is
probably more correct. _Diarmid_ has many variations, from Diarmuid to
Dermid; but Diarmid is the best English equivalent both in sound and
correctness.
It is still a moot point as to whether in narration, Gaelic names should
be given as they are, or be anglicised--or Gaelic exclamations to
phrases in their original spelling, or more phonetically to an English
ear. I think it should depend on circumstances, and within the writer's
tact. I have myself been taken to task again and again, by critics eager
with the eagerness of little knowledge, for partial anglicisation of
names and presumed mistakes in Gaelic spelling, when, surely, the
intention was obvious that a compromise was being attempted. Let me give
an example. How would the English reader like a story of, say, a Donald
Macintyre and a Grace Maclean and an Ivor Mackay if these names were
given in their Gaelic form, as Domnhuil Mac-an-t-Saoir and Giorsal nic
Illeathain and Imhir Mac Aodh--or even if simple names, like, say, Meave
and Malvina, were given as Medb or Malmhin?
It is a pity there is not one recognised way of spelling the legendary
name of Setanta, the chief hero of the Gaelic chivalry. Probably the
best rendering is Cuchulain. The old form is Cuculaind. But colloquially
the name in Gaelic is called Coohoolin or Coohullun; and so Cuculaind
would mislead the ordinary reader. The Scottish version is generally
Cuchullin--the _ch_ soft: a more correct rendering of the Macphersonian
Cuthullin, a misnomer responsible no doubt for the common mistake that
the Coolin (Cuthullin) mountains in Skye have any connection with the
great Gaelic hero (see p. 155). Setanta, a prince of Uladh, was taught
for a time in the art of weaponry by one Culain or Culaind, and after a
certain famous act of prowess became known as The Hound of Culain--_Cu_
being a hound, whence Cuculain, or with the sign of the genitive,
Cuchulain. Every variation of the name, and all the legends of the
Cuchullin cycle, will be found in Miss Eleanor Hull's excellent
redaction, published by Mr. Nutt. The interested reader should see also
the classical work of O'Curry: the vivid and romantic chronicle of Mr.
Standish O'Grady; and the fascinating and scholarly edition of _The
Feast of Bricrin_, recently published as the second volume of the Irish
Texts Society, by Dr. George Henderson, the most scholarly of Highland
specialists.
_Page 162 seq._ No one has collected so much material on the subject of
St. Michael as Mr. Alexander Carmichael has done. Some of his lore, in
sheiling-hymns and fishing-hymns, he has already made widely known,
directly and indirectly: but in his forthcoming _Or agus Ob_, already
alluded to, there will be found a long and invaluable section devoted to
St. Micheil, as also, I understand, one of like length and interest on
St. Bride or Briget, the most beloved of Hebridean saints, and herself
probably a Christian successor of a much more ancient Brighde, a Celtic
deity, it is said, of Song and Beauty.
_Page 181. Be'al._ I do not think there is any evidence to prove that
the Be'al or Bel often spelt Baal--whose name and worship survive to
this day in _Bealltainn_ (Beltane), May-day--of Gaelic mythology, is
identical with the Phoenician god Baal, though probably of a like
significance. The Gaelic name, which may be anglicised into Be'al,
signifies "Source of All."