In the sea-loch now known as that of Tarbert of Loch Fyne, but in the
old far-off days named the Haven of the Foray, there was once a grianân,
a sunbower, of so great a beauty that thereto the strings of the singing
men’s clarsachs vibrated even in far-away Ireland.
This was in the days before the yellow-haired men out of Lochlin came
swarming in their galleys, along the lochs and fjords of the west. So
long ago was it that none knows if Ulad sang his song to Fand before
Diarmid the Fair was slain on the narrow place between the two lochs, or
if it were when Colum’s white-robes were wont to come out of the open
sea up the Loch of the Swans, that is now West Loch Tarbert, so as to
reach the inlands.
But of what import is the whitherset of bygone days, where the tale of
the years and of the generations is as that of autumn’s leaves?
Ulad was there, the poet-king: and Fand, whom he loved: and Life and
Death.
Ian Mòr, of whom I have written, told me the tale many years ago. I
cannot recall all he said, and I know well that the echo of ancient
music that was below his words, as he spoke in the gloaming before the
peats, and in the ancient tongue of our people, is not now what it was
then.
None knows whence Ulad came. In the Isles of the West men said he was a
prince out of the realm of the Ultonians; but there, in the north of
Eiré, they said he was a king in the southlands. Art the White, the wise
old Ardrigh of the peoples who dwelt among the lake-lands far south,
spoke of Ulad as one born under a solitary star on the night of the
Festival of Beltane, and told that he came out of an ancient land north
or south of Muirnict, the sea which has the feet of Wales and Cornwall
upon its sunrise side and the rocks and sands of Armorica upon that
where the light reddens the west. But upon Ioua, that is now Iona, there
was one wiser even than Art the White, Dùach the Druid: and when
questioned as to Ulad the poet-king, he said he was of the ancient
people that dwelt among the inlands of Alba, the old race that had known
the divine folk, the Tuatha-de-Danann, when they were seen of men and no
mortality was upon their sweet clay. The islanders were awed by what
Dùach told them, for what manner of man could this be who had seen
Merlin going tranced through the woods, playing upon a reed, with wolves
fawning upon him, and the noise of eagles’ wings ruffling the
greenglooms of the forest overhead?
And of Fand, who knows aught? Bêl the Harper, whose songs and playing
made women’s hearts melt like wax, and in men wrought either intolerable
longing or put sudden swift flames into the blood, sang of her. And what
he sang was this: that Ulad had fared once to Hy Bràsil and had there
beheld a garth of white blooms, fragrant and wonderful, under the hither
base of a rainbow. These flowers he had gathered, and warmed all night
against his breast, and at dawn breathed into them. When the sunbreak
slid a rising line along the dawn he blew a frith across the palm of his
left hand. What had been white blooms, made rosy with his breath and
warm against his side, was a woman. It was Fand.
Who, then, can tell whether Ulad were old or young when he came to the
Haven of the Foray. He had the old ancient wisdom, and mayhap knew how
to wrap himself round with the green life that endures.
None knew of his being in that place, till, one set of a disastrous day,
a birlinn drove in before the tempest sweeping from the isle of Arran up
the great sea-loch of Fionn. The oarsmen drew breath when the headlands
were past, and then stared with amaze. Overagainst the bay in the little
rocky promontory on the north side was a house built wondrously, and
that where no house had stood, and after a fashion that not one of them
had seen, and all marvelled with wide eyes. The sunset flamed upon it,
so that its shining walls were glorious. A small round grianân it was,
but built all of blocks and stones of hill-crystal, and upborne upon
four great pine-boles driven deep into the tangled grass and sand, with
these hung about with deerskins and fells of wolf and other savagery.
Before this grianân the men in the birlinn, upon whom silence had
fallen, and whose listless oars made no lapping upon the foam-white
small leaping waves of the haven, beheld a man lying face downward.
For a time they thought the man was dead. It was one, they said, some
great one, who had perished at the feet of his desire. Others thought he
was a king who had come there to die alone, as Conn the Solitary had
done, when he had known all that man can know. And some feared that the
prone man was a demon, and the shining grianân a dreadful place of
spells. The howling of a wolf, in the opposite glen that is called
Strathnamara, brought sweat upon their backs: for when the half-human
wish evil upon men they hide their faces, and the howling of a she-wolf
is heard.
But of a sudden the helmsman made a sign. “It is Ulad,” he whispered
hoarsely, because of the salt in his throat after that day of flight and
long weariness: “It is Ulad the Wonder-Smith.”
Then all there were glad, for each man knew that Ulad the Wonder-Smith,
that was a poet and a king, wrought no ill against any clan, and that
wherever he was the swords slept.
Nevertheless they marvelled much that he was there alone, and in that
silence, with his face prone upon the wilderness, while the sunset
flamed overagainst the grianân that was now like wine, or like springing
blood light and wonderful. But as tide and wind brought the birlinn
close upon the shore, they heard a twofold noise, a rumour of strange
sound. One looked at the other, with amaze that grew into fear. For the
twofold sound was wrought of the muffled sobs and prayers of the man
that lay upon the grass and of the laughter of the woman that was
unseen, but who was within the grianân.
Connla, the helmsman and leader of the seafarers, waved to his fellows
to pull the birlinn close in among the weedy masses which hung from the
rocks. When the galley lay there, all but hidden, and each man’s head
was beneath the wrack, Connla rose. Slowly he moved to where Ulad lay,
face downward, upon the silt of sand and broken rock that was in front
of the grianân. But, before he could speak, the young king rose, though
not seeing the newcomer, and, looking upon the sunbower, whence the
laughter suddenly ceased, raised his arms.
Then, when he had raised his arms, song was upon his lips. It was a
strange chant that Connla heard, and had the sound in it of the wind far
out at sea, or of a tempest moving across treeless moors, mournful,
wild, filled with ancient sorrow and a crying that none can interpret.
And the words of it, familiar to the helmsman, and yet with a strange
lip-life upon them, were as these:—
_Ah you in the grianân there, whose laughter is on me as fire-flames,
What of the sorrow of sorrows that is mine because of my loving—
You that came to me out of the place where the rainbows are builded,
Is it woman you are, O Fand, who laughest up there in thy silence?
Sure, I have loved thee through storm and peace, through the day and
the night;
Sure, I have set the singing of songs to a marvellous swan-song for
thee,
And death I have dared, and life have I dared, and gloom and the
grave,
And yet, O Fand, thou laughest down on my pain, on my pain, O Fand.
All things have I thrown away gladly only to win thee—
Kingship and lordship of men, the fame of the sword, and all good
things—
For in thee at the last, I dreamed, in thee, O Fand, Queen of Women,
I had found all that a man may find, and was as the gods who die not.
But what of all this to me, who am Ulad the King, the Harper,
Ulad the Singer of Songs that are fire in the hearts of the hearers,
Ulad the Wonder-Smith, who can bridle the winds and the billows,
Can lay waste the greatest of Dûns or build grianâns here in the
wilds—
What of all this to me, who am only a man that seeketh,
That seeketh for ever and ever the Soul that is fellow to his—
The Soul that is thee, O Fand, who wert born of flowers ’neath the
rainbow,
Breathed with my breath, warmed at my breast, O Fand, whom I love and
I worship?
For all things are vain unto me, but one thing only, and that not vain
is—
My Dream, my Passion, my Hope, my Fand, whom I won from Hy Bràsil:
O Dream of my life, my Glory, O Rose of the World, my Dream,
Lo, death for Ulad the King, if thou failest, for all that I am of the
Danann who die not._
And when he had chanted these words, Ulad, who was young and wondrous
fair to look upon, held out his arms to Fand, whom yet he did not see,
for she was within the grianân.
“Then, if even not yet at the setting of the day,” the king muttered,
“patience shall be upon me till the coming of a new day, and then it may
be that Fand will hear my prayer.”
And so the night fell. But when the screaming of the gulls came over the
loch, and the plaintive crying of the lapwings was upon the moorland,
and the smell of loneroid and bracken was heavy in the wind-fallen
stillness, Ulad turned, for he felt a touch upon his shoulder.
It was Connla who touched him, and he knew the man. He had the old
wisdom of knowing all that is in the mind by looking into the eyes, and
he knew how the man had come there.
“Let the men who are your men, O Connla, move away from here in their
birlinn, and go farther up into the haven.”
And because he was a Wonder-Smith, and knew all, the islander did as
Ulad bade, and without question. But when they were alone again he
spoke.
“Ulad, great lord, I am a man who is as idle sand beneath the feet of
you who know the ancient wisdom, and are young with imperishing years,
and are a great king in some land I know not of—so, at the least, men
say. But I know one thing that you do not know.”
“If you will tell me one thing that I do not know, O Connla, you shall
have your heart’s desire.”
Connla laughed at that.
“Not even you, O Ulad, can give me my heart’s desire.”
“And what will that desire be then, you whom the islesmen call Connla
the Wise?”
“That one might see in the dew the footsteps of old years returning.”
“That thing, Connla, I cannot do.”
“And yet thou wouldst do what is a thing as vain as that?”
“Speak. I will listen.”
Then Connla drew close to Ulad, and whispered in his ear. Thereafter he
gave him a hollow reed with holes in it, such as the shepherding folk
use on the hills. And with that he went away into the darkness.
When the moon rose, Ulad took the reed and played upon it. While he
played, scales fell from his eyes, and dreams passed from his brain, and
his heart grew light. Then he sang:
_Come forth, Fand, come forth, beautiful Fand, my woman, my fawn,
The smell of thy falling hair is sweet as the breath of the
wild-brier—
I weary of this white moonshine who love better the white discs of thy
breasts,
And the secret song of the gods is faint beside the craving in my
blood._
_Fand, Fand, Fand, white one, who art no dream but a woman,
Come forth from the grianân, or lo by the word of me, Ulad the King,
Forth shalt thou come as a she-wolf, and no more be a woman,
Come forth to me, Fand, who am now as a flame for thy burning!_
Thereupon a low laugh was heard, and Fand came forth out of the grianân.
White and beautiful she was, the fairest of all women, and Ulad was
glad. When near, she whispered in his ears, and hand-in-hand they went
back into the grianân.
At dawn Ulad looked upon the beauty of Fand, and he saw she was as a
flower.
“O fair and beautiful Dream,” he whispered—but of a sudden Fand laughed
in her sleep, and he remembered what Connla the Wise had told him.
“Woman,” Ulad muttered then, “I see well that thou art not my Dream, but
only a woman.” And with that he half-rose from her.
Fand opened her eyes, and the beauty of them was greater for the light
that was there.
“Then thou art only Ulad, a man?” she cried, and she put her arms about
him, and kissed him on the lips and on the breast, sobbing low as with a
strange gladness—“I will follow thee, Ulad, to death, for I am thy
woman.”
“Ay,” he said, looking beyond her, “if I feed thee, and call thee my
woman, and find pleasure in thee, and give thee my manhood.”
“And what else wouldst thou, O Ulad?” Fand asked, wondering.
“I am Ulad the Lonely,” he answered: this, and no more.
Then, later, he took the hollow reed again, and again played.
And when he had played he looked at Fand. He saw into her heart, and
into her brain.
“I have dreamed my dream,” he said; “but I am still Ulad the
Wonder-Smith.”
With that he blew a frith across the palm of his left hand, and said
this thing:—
“O woman that would not come to me, when I called out of that within me
which is I myself, farewell!”
And with that Fand was a drift of white flowers there upon the
deerskins.
Then once more Ulad spoke.
“O woman, that heeded no bitter prayer which I made, but at the last
came only as a she-wolf to the wolf, farewell!”
And with that a wind-eddy scattered the white flowers upon the
deerskins, and they wavered hither and thither, and some were stained by
the pale wandering fires of a rainbow that drifted over that place, then
as now the haunt of these cloudy splendours, forever woven there out of
sun and mist.
At noon, the seafarers came towards the grianân with songs, and
offerings.
But Ulad was not there.
_ULA AND URLA_
“Rose of all Roses, Rose of all the World!
You, too, have come where the dim tides are hurled
Upon the wharves of sorrow, and heard ring
The bell that calls us on: the sweet far thing.
Beauty grown sad with its eternity
Made you of us, and of the dim grey sea.”