Re-issue of the Shorter
Stories of Fiona Macleod
rearranged, with
additional
tales
COPYRIGHTED IN THE UNITED
STATES: ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Volume one
Spiritual Tales
BY
Fiona Macleod
PATRICK GEDDES & COLLEAGUES
THE OUTLOOK TOWER·CASTLEHILL·EDINBURGH
_To LILAVAN_
_... For I have seen
In lonely places, and in lonelier hours,
Beyond the involving veils of day and night
Circumfluent o’er the shadowy drift of years,
My vision of the rainbow-aureoled face
Of her whom men name Beauty: proud, austere,
Inviolate, immortal, undismayed
By the swift-eddying dust of wandering Time—
Dim vision of the flawless, perfect Face,
Divinely fugitive, that haunts the world
And lifts man’s spiral thought to lovelier dreams._
SPIRITUAL TALES
“I like to think that 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.... 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.”
(From the Prologue to
_The Washer of the Ford_.)