(TO KATHIA)
_I find, under the boughs of love and hate,
Eternal Beauty wandering on her way._
The Rose upon the Rood of Time.
To you, in your far-away home in Provence, I send these tales out of
the remote North you love so well, and so well understand. The same
blood is in our veins, a deep current somewhere beneath the tide that
sustains us. We have meeting-places that none knows of; we understand
what few can understand; and we share in common a strange and
inexplicable heritage. It is because you, who are called Kathia of the
Sunway, are also Kathia nan Ciar, Kathia of the Shadow, it is because
you are what you are that I inscribe this book to you. In it you will
find much that is familiar to you, though you may never have read or
heard anything of the kind; for there is a reality, beneath the
unfamiliar accident, which may be recognised in a moment as native to
the secret life that lives behind the brain and the wise nerves with
their dim ancestral knowledge.
The greater portion of this book deals with the remote life of a
remote past. "The Shadow-Seers," however, though of to-day, may
equally be of yesterday or to-morrow; and as for "The Last Supper" or
"The Fisher of Men," they are of no time or date, for they are founded
upon elemental facts which are modified but not transformed by the
changing years.
It may be the last of its kind I shall write--at any rate, for a time.
I would like it to be associated with you, to whom not only the
mystery but the pagan sentiment and the old barbaric emotion are so
near. With the second sight of the imagination we can often see more
clearly in the perspectives of the past than in the maze of the
present; and most clearly when we recognise that, below the accidents
of time and circumstance, the present is but a reflection of that past
to which we belong--belong, as intimately and inalienably, as to the
hour wherein happily content we swing to those anchors which we do not
see are linked to us by ropes of sand.
If I am eager to have my say on other aspects of our Celtic life in
the remoter West Highlands and in the Isles: now with the idyllic, now
with the tragic, now with the grotesque, the humorous, the pathetic,
with all the medley cast from the looms of Life--all that
"... from the looms of Life are spun,
Warp of shadow and woof of sun--"
and if, too, I long to express anew something of that wonderful
historic romance in which we of our race and country are so rich, I am
not likely to forget those earlier dreams which are no whit less
realities--realities of the present seen through an inverted
glass--which have been, and are, so full of inspiration and of a
strange and terrible beauty.
But one to whom life appeals by a myriad avenues, all alluring and
full of wonder and mystery, cannot always abide where the heart longs
most to be. It is well to remember that there are shadowy waters even
in the cities, and that the Fount of Youth is discoverable in the
dreariest towns as well as in Hy Bràsil: a truth apt to be forgotten
by those of us who dwell with ever-wondering delight in that land of
lost romance which had its own day, as this epoch of a still stranger,
if a less obvious, romance has its own passing hour.
The titular piece--with its strange name that will not be unfamiliar
to you who know our ancient Celtic literature, or may bear in mind the
striking use made of it and its vague cognate legend, by Ferguson, in
his Irish epic, _Congal_--gives the keynote not only of this book but
of what has for hundreds of years, and to some extent still is, the
characteristic of the purely Celtic mind in the Highlands and the
Isles. This characteristic is a strange complexity of paganism and
Christianity, or rather an apparent complexity arising from the
grafting of Christianity upon paganism. Columba, St. Patrick, St.
Ronan, Kentigern, all these militant Christian saints were merely
transformed pagans. Even in the famous dialogue between St. Patrick
and Oisìn, which is the folk-telling of the passing of the old before
the new, the thrill of a pagan sympathy on the part of the
uncompromising saint is unmistakable. To this day, there are
Christian rites and superstitions which are merely a gloss upon a
surviving antique paganism. I have known an old woman, in no wise
different from her neighbours, who on the day of Beltane sacrificed a
hen: though for her propitiatory rite she had no warrant save that of
vague traditionary lore, the lore of the _teinntean_, of the
hearth-side--where, in truth, are best to be heard the last echoes of
the dim mythologic faith of our ancestors. What is the familiar
"clachan," now meaning a hamlet with a kirk, but an echo of the
Stones, the circles of the druids or of a more ancient worship still,
that perhaps of the mysterious Anait, whose sole record is a _clach_
on a lonely moor, of which from time immemorial the people have spoken
as the "Teampull na'n Anait"? A relative of mine saw, in South Uist,
less than twenty-five years ago, what may have been the last
sun-sacrifice in Scotland, when an old Gael secretly and furtively
slew a lamb on the summit of a conical grassy knoll at sunrise. Those
who have the Gaelic have their ears filled with rumours of a day that
is gone. When an evicted crofter laments, _O mo chreach, mo
chreach!_[1] or some poor soul on a bed of pain cries, _O mo
chradshlat_,[2] he who knows the past recognises in the one the
mournful refrain of the time when the sea-pirates or the hill-robbers
pillaged and devasted quiet homesteads, and, in the other, not the
moan of suffering only, but the cry of torment from the victim racked
on the _cradhshlat_, a bitter ignominious torture used by the ancient
Gaels. When, in good fellowship, one man says to another, _Tha, a
laochain_ (yes, my dear fellow), he recalls Fionn and the chivalry of
eld, for _laochan_ is merely a contraction for laoch-Fhinn, meaning a
companion in war, a hero, literally Fionn's right-hand man in battle.
To this day, women, accompanying a marching regiment, are sometimes
heard to say in the Gaelic, "We are going with the dear souls to the
wars"--literally an echo of the Ossianic _Siubhlaidh sinn le'n anam
do'n araich_, "We shall accompany their souls to the battle-field." A
thousand instances could be adduced. The language is a herring-net,
through which the unchanging sea filtrates, even though the net be
clogged with the fish of the hour. Nor is it the pagan atmosphere only
that survives: often we breathe the air of that early day when the
mind of man was attuned to a beautiful piety that was wrought into
nature itself. Of the several words for the dawn, there is a beautiful
one, _Uinneagachadh_. We have it in the phrase _'nuair a bha an latha
ag uinneagachadh_, "when the day began to dawn." Now this word is
simply an extension of _Uinneag_, a window: and the application of the
image dates far back to the days of St. Columba, when some devout and
poetic soul spoke of the _uinneagan Neimh_, the windows of Heaven.
[1] Oh, alas, alas! (Literally, Oh, my undoing, or Oh, my utter
ruin.)
[2] Alas my torment!
Sometimes, among the innumerable "legendary moralities" which exist
fragmentarily in the West Highlands and in the Isles, there is a
coherent narrative basis--as, for example, in the Irish and Highland
folk-lore about St. Bride, or Bridget, "Muime Chriosd." Sometimes
there is simply a phrase survived out of antiquity. I doubt if any now
living, either in the Hebrides or in Ireland, has heard any legend of
the "Washer of the Ford." The name survives, with its atmosphere of a
remote past, its dim ancestral memory of a shadowy figure of awe
haunting a shadowy stream in a shadowy land. Samuel Ferguson, in
_Congal_, has done little more than limn an obscure shadow of that
shadow: yet it haunts the imagination. In the passage of paganism,
these old myths were too deep-rooted in the Celtic mind to vanish at
the bidding of the Cross: thus came about that strange grafting of the
symbolic imagery of the devout Culdee, of the visionary Mariolater,
upon the surviving Druidic and prehistoric imagination. In a word, the
Washer of the Ford might well have appeared, to a single generation,
now as a terrible and sombre pagan goddess of death, now as a symbolic
figure in the new faith, foreshadowing spiritual salvation and the
mystery of resurrection.
If in a composition such as "The Annir-Choille," there is the
expression of revolt--not ancient only, nor of the hour, but eternal,
for the revolt is of the sovereign nature within us whereon all else
is an accidental superstructure--against the Christian ethic of
renunciation, with an echo of our deep primeval longing for
earth-kinship with every life in nature: if here there is the breath
of a day that may not come again, there is little or nothing of the
past, save what is merely accidental, in "The Fisher of Men" or "The
Last Supper." I like to think that these _eachdaireachd Spioradail_,
these spiritual chronicles, might as well, in substance, have been
told a thousand years ago or be written a thousand years hence. That
Fisher still haunts the invisible shadowy stream of human tears: those
mystic Spinners still ply their triple shuttles, and the Fair Weaver
of Hope, now as of yore and for ever, sends his rainbows adrift across
the hearts and through the minds of men. What does it matter, again,
that the Three Marvels of Hy are set against the background of the
Iona of St. Columba? St. Francis blessed the birds of Assisi, and San
Antonio had a heart as tender for all winged and gentle creatures: and
there are innumerable quiet gardens of peace in the world even now
where the kindred of San Antonio and St. Francis and St. Columba are
kith to our fellow-beings, knowing them akin one and all to the seals
whom St. Molios blessed at the end of his days, and in his new
humbleness hailed as likewise of the company of the Sons of God.
But of this I am sure. If there is spiritual truth in the vision of
the Blind Harper who saw the Washer of the Ford, or in that of Molios
who hailed the seals as brethren, or in that of Colum who blessed the
birds and the fish of the sea and even the vagrant flies of the air,
and saw the Moon-Child, and in that seeing learned the last mystery of
the life of the soul, if in these, as in the "Fisher of Men" and "The
Last Supper," I have given faint utterance to the heart-knowledge we
all have, I would not have you or any think that the pagan way is
therefore to me as the way of darkness. The lost monk who loved the
Annir-Choille was doubtless not the less able to see the Uinneagan
Neimh because he was under ban of Colum and all his kin: and there are
those of us who would rather be with Cathal of the Woods, and be
drunken with green fire, than gain the paradise of the holy Molios who
banned him, if in that gain were involved the forfeiture of the sunny
green world, the joy of life, and the earth-sweet ancient song of the
blood that is in the veins of youth.
These tales, let me add, are not legendary "mysteries" but legendary
"moralities." They are reflections from the mirror that is often
obscured but is never dimmed. There is no mystery in them, or
anywhere: except the eternal mystery of beauty.
Of the Seanachas, the short barbaric tales, I will say nothing to you,
whose favourite echo from Shelley is that thrilling line "the
tempestuous loveliness of terror."
You in your far Provence, amid the austere hills that guard an ancient
land of olive and vine, a land illumined by the blue flowing light of
the Rhone, and girt by desert places where sun and wind inhabit, and
scarce any other--you there and I here have this in common. Everywhere
we see the life of man in subservient union with the life of Nature;
never, in a word, as a sun beset by tributary stars, but as one planet
among the innumerous concourse of the sky, nurtured, it may be, by
light from other luminaries and other spheres than we know of. That
we are intimately at one with Nature is a cosmic truth we are all
slowly approaching. It is not only the dog, it is not only the wild
beast and the wood-dove, that are our close kindred, but the green
tree and the green grass, the blue wave and the flowing wind, the
flower of a day and the granite peak of an æon. And I for one would
rather have the wind for comrade, and the white stars and green leaves
as my kith and kin, than many a human companion, whose chief claim is
the red blood that differs little from the sap in the grass or in the
pines, and whose "deathless soul" is, mayhap, no more than a fugitive
light blown idly for an hour betwixt dawn and dark. We are woven in
one loom, and the Weaver thrids our being with the sweet influences,
not only of the Pleiades, but of the living world of which each is no
more than a multi-coloured thread: as, in turn, He thrids the
wandering wind with the inarticulate cry, the yearning, the passion,
the pain, of that bitter clan, the Human.
Truly, we are all one. It is a common tongue we speak, though the
wave has its own whisper, and the wind its own sigh, and the lip of
the man its word, and the heart of woman its silence.
Long, long ago a desert king, old and blind, but dowered with
ancestral wisdom beyond all men that have lived, heard that the Son of
God was born among men. He rose from his place, and on the eve of the
third day he came to where Jesus sat among the gifts brought by the
wise men of the East. The little lad sat in Mary's lap, beneath a tree
filled with quiet light; and while the folk of Bethlehem came and went
He was only a child as other children are. But when the desert king
drew near, the child's eyes deepened with knowledge.
"What is it, my little son?" said Mary the Virgin.
"Sure, Mother dear," said Jesus, who had never yet spoken a word, "it
is Deep Knowledge that is coming to me."
"And what will that be, O my Wonder and Glory?"
"That which will come in at the door before you speak to me again."
Even as the child spoke, an old blind man entered, and bowed his
head.
"Come near, O tired old man," said Mary that had borne a son to
Joseph, but whose womb knew him not.
With that the tears fell into the old man's beard. "Sorrow of
Sorrows," he said, "but that will be the voice of the Queen of
Heaven!"
But Jesus said to his mother: "Take up the tears, and throw them into
the dark night." And Mary did so: and lo! upon the wilderness, where
no light was, and on the dark wave, where seamen toiled without hope,
clusters of shining stars rayed downward in a white peace.
Thereupon the old king of the desert said:
"Heal me, O King of the Elements."
And Jesus healed him. His sight was upon him again, and his gray
ancientness was green youth once more.
"I have come with Deep Knowledge," he said.
"Ay, sure, I am for knowing that," said the King of the Elements, that
was a little child.
"Well, if you will be knowing that, you can tell me who is at my
right side?"
"It is my elder brother the Wind."
"And what colour will the Wind be?"
"Now blue as Hope, now green as Compassion."
"And who is on my left?"
"The Shadow of Life."
"And what colour will the Shadow be?"
"That which is woven out of the bowels of the earth and out of the
belly of the sea."
"Truly, thou art the King of the Elements. I am bringing you a great
gift, I am: I have come with Deep Knowledge."
And with that the old blind man, whose eyes were now as stars, and
whose youth was a green garland about him, chanted nine runes.
The first rune was the Rune of the Four Winds.
The second rune was the Rune of the Deep Seas.
The third rune was the Rune of the Lochs and Rivers and the Rains and
the Dews and the many waters.
The fourth rune was the Rune of the Green Trees and of all things
that grow.
The fifth rune was the Rune of Man and Bird and Beast, and of
everything that lives and moves, in the air, on the earth, and in the
sea: all that is seen of man, and all that is unseen of man.
The sixth rune was the Rune of Birth, from the spawn on the wave to
the Passion of Woman.
The seventh rune was the Rune of Death, from the quenching of a gnat
to the fading of the stars.
The eighth rune was the Rune of the Soul that dieth not, and the
Spirit that is.
The ninth rune was the Rune of the Mud and the Dross and the Slime of
Evil--that is the Garden of God, wherein He walks with sunlight
streaming from the palms of his hands and with stars springing beneath
his feet.
Then when he had done, the old man said: "I have brought you Deep
Knowledge." But at that Jesus the Child said:
"All this I heard on my way hither."
The old desert king bowed his head. Then he took a blade of grass,
and played upon it. It was a wild, strange air that he played.
"Iosa mac Dhe, tell the woman what song _that_ is," cried the desert
king.
"It is the secret speech of the Wind that is my Brother," cried the
child, clapping his hands for joy.
"And what will this be?" and with that the old man took a green leaf,
and played a lovely whispering song.
"It is the secret speech of the leaves," cried Jesus the little lad,
laughing low.
And thereafter the desert king played upon a handful of dust, and upon
a drop of water, and upon a flame of fire; and the Child laughed for
the knowing and the joy. Then he gave the secret speech of the singing
bird, and the barking fox, and the howling wolf, and the bleating
sheep: of all and every created kind.
"O King of the Elements," he said then, "for sure you knew much; but
now I have made you to know the secret things of the green Earth that
is Mother of you and of Mary too."
But while Jesus pondered that one mystery, the old man was gone: and
when he got to his people, they put him alive into a hollow of the
earth and covered him up, because of his shining eyes, and the green
youth that was about him as a garland.
And when Christ was nailed upon the Cross, Deep Knowledge went back
into the green world, and passed into the grass and the sap in trees,
and the flowing wind, and the dust that swirls and is gone.
* * * * *
All this is of the wisdom of the long ago, and you and I are of those
who know how ancient it is, how remoter far than when Mary, at the
bidding of her little son, threw up into the firmament the tears of an
old man.