hauled himself out of the water.
From rock to rock and ledge to ledge he went, with a fantastic dancing
motion, his body gleaming foam-white in the moonshine.
As he pranced and trampled along the weedy ledges, he sang snatches of an
old rune--the lost rune of the MacCodrums of Uist. The seals on the rocks
crouched spell-bound: those slow-swimming in the water stared with brown
unwinking eyes, with their small ears strained against the sound:--
It is I, Mànus MacCodrum,
I am telling you that, you, Anndra of my blood,
And you, Neil my grandfather, and you, and you, and you!
Ay, ay, Mànus my name is, Mànus MacMànus!
It is I myself, and no other,
Your brother, O Seals of the Sea!
Give me blood of the red fish,
And a bite of the flying sgadan;
The green wave on my belly,
And the foam in my eyes!
I am your bull-brother, O Bulls of the Sea,
Bull-better than any of you, snarling bulls!
Come to me, mate, seal of the soft furry womb,
White am I still, though red shall I be,
Red with the streaming red blood if any dispute me!
Aoh, aoh, aoh, arò, arò, ho-rò!
A man was I, a seal am I,
My fangs churn the yellow foam from my lips:
Give way to me, give way to me, Seals of the Sea;
Give way, for I am fëy of the sea
And the sea-maiden I see there,
And my name, true, is Mànus MacCodrum,
The bull-seal that was a man, Arà! Arà!
By this time he was close upon the great black seal, which was still
monotonously swaying its gory head, with its sightless eyes rolling this
way and that. The sea-folk seemed fascinated. None moved, even when the
dancer in the moonshine trampled upon them.
When he came within arm-reach he stopped.
“Are you the Ceann-Cinnidh?” he cried. “Are you the head of this clan of
the sea-folk?”
The huge beast ceased its swaying. Its curled lips moved from its fangs.
“Speak, Seal, if there’s no curse upon you! Maybe, now, you’ll be Anndra
himself, the brother of my father! Speak! _H’st--are you hearing that
music on the shore!_ ’Tis the Dàn-nan-Ròn! Death o’ my soul, it’s the
Dàn-nan-Ròn! Aha, ’tis Gloom Achanna out of the Grave. Back, beast, and
let me move on!”
With that, seeing the great bull did not move, he struck it full in the
face with clenched fist. There was a hoarse strangling roar, and the seal
champion was upon him with lacerating fangs.
Mànus swayed this way and that. All he could hear now was the snarling
and growling and choking cries of the maddened seals. As he fell, they
closed in upon him. His screams wheeled through the night like mad
birds. With desperate fury he struggled to free himself. The great bull
pinned him to the rock; a dozen others tore at his white flesh, till his
spouting blood made the rocks scarlet in the white shine of the moon.
For a few seconds he still fought savagely, tearing with teeth and hands.
Once, only, a wild cry burst from his lips: when from the shore end of
the reef came loud and clear the lilt of the rune of his fate.
The next moment he was dragged down and swept from the reef into the
sea. As the torn and mangled body disappeared from sight, it was amid
a seething crowd of leaping and struggling seals, their eyes wild with
affright and fury, their fangs red with human gore.
And Gloom Achanna, turning upon the reef, moved swiftly inland, playing
low on his _feadan_ as he went.
_THE SIN-EATER_
_NOTE_
It should be explained that the sin-relinquishing superstition--a
superstition probably pre-Celtic, perhaps of the remotest
antiquity--hardly exists to-day, or, if at all, in its crudest guise.
The last time I heard of it, even in a modified form, was not in the
west, but in a remote part of the Aberdeenshire highlands. Then, it was
salt, not bread, that was put on the breast of the dead: and the salt
was thrown away, nor was any wayfarer called upon to perform this or any
other function.
THE SIN-EATER
SIN.
_Taste this bread, this substance: tell me_
_Is it bread or flesh?_
[_The Senses approach._]
THE SMELL.
_Its smell_
_Is the smell of bread._
SIN.
_Touch, come. Why tremble?_
_Say what’s this thou touchest?_
THE TOUCH.
_Bread._
SIN.
_Sight, declare what thou discernest_
_In this object._
THE SIGHT.
_Bread alone._
CALDERON,
_Los Encantos de la Culpa._
A wet wind out of the south mazed and mooned through the sea-mist that
hung over the Ross. In all the bays and creeks was a continuous weary
lapping of water. There was no other sound anywhere.
Thus was it at daybreak: it was thus at noon: thus was it now in the
darkening of the day. A confused thrusting and falling of sounds through
the silence betokened the hour of the setting. Curlews wailed in the
mist: on the seething limpet-covered rocks the skuas and terns screamed,
or uttered hoarse, rasping cries. Ever and again the prolonged note of
the oyster-catcher shrilled against the air, as an echo flying blindly
along a blank wall of cliff. Out of weedy places, wherein the tide sobbed
with long, gurgling moans, came at intervals the barking of a seal.
Inland, by the hamlet of Contullich, there is a reedy tarn called the
Loch-a-chaoruinn.[5] By the shores of this mournful water a man moved.
It was a slow, weary walk that of the man Neil Ross. He had come from
Duninch, thirty miles to the eastward, and had not rested foot, nor
eaten, nor had word of man or woman, since his going west an hour after
dawn.
[5] _Contullich_: _i.e._ Ceann-nan-tulaich, “the end of the
hillocks.” _Loch-a-chaoruinn_ means the loch of the rowan-trees.
At the bend of the loch nearest the clachan he came upon an old woman
carrying peat. To his reiterated question as to where he was, and if the
tarn were Feur-Lochan above Fionnaphort that is on the strait of Iona on
the west side of the Ross of Mull, she did not at first make any answer.
The rain trickled down her withered brown face, over which the thin grey
locks hung limply. It was only in the deep-set eyes that the flame of
life still glimmered, though that dimly.
The man had used the English when first he spoke, but as though
mechanically. Supposing that he had not been understood, he repeated his
question in the Gaelic.
After a minute’s silence the old woman answered him in the native tongue,
but only to put a question in return.
“I am thinking it is a long time since you have been in Iona?”
The man stirred uneasily.
“And why is that, mother?” he asked, in a weak voice hoarse with damp and
fatigue; “how is it you will be knowing that I have been in Iona at all?”
“Because I knew your kith and kin there, Neil Ross.”
“I have not been hearing that name, mother, for many a long year. And as
for the old face o’ you, it is unbeknown to me.”
“I was at the naming of you, for all that. Well do I remember the day
that Silis Macallum gave you birth; and I was at the house on the croft
of Ballyrona when Murtagh Ross--that was your father--laughed. It was an
ill laughing that.”
“I am knowing it. The curse of God on him!”
“’Tis not the first, nor the last, though the grass is on his head three
years agone now.”
“You that know who I am will be knowing that I have no kith or kin now on
Iona?”
“Ay; they are all under grey stone or running wave. Donald your brother,
and Murtagh your next brother, and little Silis, and your mother Silis
herself, and your two brothers of your father, Angus and Ian Macallum,
and your father Murtagh Ross, and his lawful childless wife, Dionaid, and
his sister Anna--one and all, they lie beneath the green wave or in the
brown mould. It is said there is a curse upon all who live at Ballyrona.
The owl builds now in the rafters, and it is the big sea-rat that runs
across the fireless hearth.”
“It is there I am going.”
“The foolishness is on you, Neil Ross.”
“Now it is that I am knowing who you are. It is old Sheen Macarthur I am
speaking to.”
“_Tha mise_ … it is I.”
“And you will be alone now, too, I am thinking, Sheen?”
“I am alone. God took my three boys at the one fishing ten years ago; and
before there was moonrise in the blackness of my heart my man went. It
was after the drowning of Anndra that my croft was taken from me. Then I
crossed the Sound, and shared with my widow sister Elsie McVurie: till
_she_ went: and then the two cows had to go: and I had no rent: and was
old.”
In the silence that followed, the rain dribbled from the sodden bracken
and dripping loneroid. Big tears rolled slowly down the deep lines on
the face of Sheen. Once there was a sob in her throat, but she put her
shaking hand to it, and it was still.
Neil Ross shifted from foot to foot. The ooze in that marshy place
squelched with each restless movement he made. Beyond them a plover
wheeled, a blurred splatch in the mist, crying its mournful cry over and
over and over.
It was a pitiful thing to hear: ah, bitter loneliness, bitter patience of
poor old women. That he knew well. But he was too weary, and his heart
was nigh full of its own burthen. The words could not come to his lips.
But at last he spoke.
“Tha mo chridhe goirt,” he said, with tears in his voice, as he put his
hand on her bent shoulder; “my heart is sore.”
She put up her old face against his.
“’S tha e ruidhinn mo chridhe,” she whispered; “it is touching my heart
you are.”
After that they walked on slowly through the dripping mist, each dumb and
brooding deep.
“Where will you be staying this night?” asked Sheen suddenly, when
they had traversed a wide boggy stretch of land; adding, as by an
afterthought--“Ah, it is asking you were if the tarn there were
Feur-Lochan. No; it is Loch-a-chaoruinn, and the clachan that is near is
Contullich.”
“Which way?”
“Yonder: to the right.”
“And you are not going there?”
“No. I am going to the steading of Andrew Blair. Maybe you are for
knowing it? It is called the Baile-na-Chlais-nambuidheag.”[6]
[6] The farm in the hollow of the yellow flowers.
“I do not remember. But it is remembering a Blair I am. He was Adam, the
son of Adam, the son of Robert. He and my father did many an ill deed
together.”
“Ay, to the stones be it said. Sure, now, there was, even till this weary
day, no man or woman who had a good word for Adam Blair.”
“And why that … why till this day?”
“It is not yet the third hour since he went into the silence.”
Neil Ross uttered a sound like a stifled curse. For a time he trudged
wearily on.
“Then I am too late,” he said at last, but as though speaking to himself.
“I had hoped to see him face to face again, and curse him between the
eyes. It was he who made Murtagh Ross break his troth to my mother, and
marry that other woman, barren at that, God be praised! And they say ill
of him, do they?”
“Ay, it is evil that is upon him. This crime and that, God knows; and the
shadow of murder on his brow and in his eyes. Well, well, ’tis ill to be
speaking of a man in corpse, and that near by. ’Tis Himself only that
knows, Neil Ross.”
“Maybe ay and maybe no. But where is it that I can be sleeping this
night, Sheen Macarthur?”
“They will not be taking a stranger at the farm this night of the nights,
I am thinking. There is no place else for seven miles yet, when there is
the clachan, before you will be coming to Fionnaphort. There is the warm
byre, Neil, my man; or, if you can bide by my peats, you may rest, and
welcome, though there is no bed for you, and no food either save some of
the porridge that is over.”
“And that will do well enough for me, Sheen; and Himself bless you for
it.”
And so it was.
* * * * *
After old Sheen Macarthur had given the wayfarer food--poor food at that,
but welcome to one nigh starved, and for the heartsome way it was given,
and because of the thanks to God that was upon it before even spoon was
lifted--she told him a lie. It was the good lie of tender love.
“Sure now, after all, Neil, my man,” she said, “it is sleeping at the
farm I ought to be, for Maisie Macdonald, the wise woman, will be sitting
by the corpse, and there will be none to keep her company. It is there I
must be going; and if I am weary, there is a good bed for me just beyond
the dead-board, which I am not minding at all. So, if it is tired you are
sitting by the peats, lie down on my bed there, and have the sleep; and
God be with you.”
With that she went, and soundlessly, for Neil Ross was already asleep,
where he sat on an upturned _claar_, with his elbows on his knees, and
his flame-lit face in his hands.
The rain had ceased; but the mist still hung over the land, though in
thin veils now, and these slowly drifting seaward. Sheen stepped wearily
along the stony path that led from her bothy to the farm-house. She
stood still once, the fear upon her, for she saw three or four blurred
yellow gleams moving beyond her, eastward, along the dyke. She knew what
they were--the corpse-lights that on the night of death go between the
bier and the place of burial. More than once she had seen them before the
last hour, and by that token had known the end to be near.
Good Catholic that she was, she crossed herself, and took heart. Then,
muttering
_Crois nan naoi aingeal leam_
_’O mhullach mo chinn_
_Gu craican mo bhonn_
(The cross of the nine angels be about me,
From the top of my head
To the soles of my feet),
she went on her way fearlessly.
When she came to the White House, she entered by the milk-shed that was
between the byre and the kitchen. At the end of it was a paved place,
with washing-tubs. At one of these stood a girl that served in the
house,--an ignorant lass called Jessie McFall, out of Oban. She was
ignorant, indeed, not to know that to wash clothes with a newly dead
body near by was an ill thing to do. Was it not a matter for the knowing
that the corpse could hear, and might rise up in the night and clothe
itself in a clean white shroud?
She was still speaking to the lassie when Maisie Macdonald, the
deid-watcher, opened the door of the room behind the kitchen to see who
it was that was come. The two old women nodded silently. It was not till
Sheen was in the closed room, midway in which something covered with a
sheet lay on a board, that any word was spoken.
“Duit sìth mòr, Beann Macdonald.”
“And deep peace to you, too, Sheen; and to him that is there.”
“Och, ochone, mise ’n diugh; ’tis a dark hour this.”
“Ay; it is bad. Will you have been hearing or seeing anything?”
“Well, as for that, I am thinking I saw lights moving betwixt here and
the green place over there.”
“The corpse-lights?”
“Well, it is calling them that they are.”
“I _thought_ they would be out. And I have been hearing the noise of the
planks--the cracking of the boards, you know, that will be used for the
coffin to-morrow.”
A long silence followed. The old women had seated themselves by the
corpse, their cloaks over their heads. The room was fireless, and was lit
only by a tall wax death-candle, kept against the hour of the going.
At last Sheen began swaying slowly to and fro, crooning low the while. “I
would not be for doing that, Sheen Macarthur,” said the deid-watcher in a
low voice, but meaningly; adding, after a moment’s pause, “_The mice have
all left the house._”
Sheen sat upright, a look half of terror half of awe in her eyes.
“God save the sinful soul that is hiding,” she whispered.
Well she knew what Maisie meant. If the soul of the dead be a lost soul
it knows its doom. The house of death is the house of sanctuary; but
before the dawn that follows the death-night the soul must go forth,
whosoever or whatsoever wait for it in the homeless, shelterless plains
of air around and beyond. If it be well with the soul, it need have no
fear: if it be not ill with the soul, it may fare forth with surety; but
if it be ill with the soul, ill will the going be. Thus is it that the
spirit of an evil man cannot stay, and yet dare not go; and so it strives
to hide itself in secret places anywhere, in dark channels and blind
walls; and the wise creatures that live near man smell the terror, and
flee. Maisie repeated the saying of Sheen; then, after a silence, added--
“Adam Blair will not lie in his grave for a year and a day because of the
sins that are upon him; and it is knowing that, they are, here. He will
be the Watcher of the Dead for a year and a day.”
“Ay, sure, there will be dark prints in the dawn-dew over yonder.”
Once more the old women relapsed into silence. Through the night there
was a sighing sound. It was not the sea, which was too far off to be
heard save in a day of storm. The wind it was, that was dragging itself
across the sodden moors like a wounded thing, moaning and sighing.
Out of sheer weariness, Sheen twice rocked forward from her stool, heavy
with sleep. At last Maisie led her over to the niche-bed opposite, and
laid her down there, and waited till the deep furrows in the face relaxed
somewhat, and the thin breath laboured slow across the fallen jaw.
“Poor old woman,” she muttered, heedless of her own grey hairs and greyer
years; “a bitter, bad thing it is to be old, old and weary. ’Tis the
sorrow, that. God keep the pain of it!”
As for herself, she did not sleep at all that night, but sat between
the living and the dead, with her plaid shrouding her. Once, when Sheen
gave a low, terrified scream in her sleep, she rose, and in a loud voice
cried, “_Sheeach-ad! Away with you!_” And with that she lifted the shroud
from the dead man, and took the pennies off the eyelids, and lifted
each lid; then, staring into these filmed wells, muttered an ancient
incantation that would compel the soul of Adam Blair to leave the spirit
of Sheen alone, and return to the cold corpse that was its coffin till
the wood was ready.
The dawn came at last. Sheen slept, and Adam Blair slept a deeper sleep,
and Maisie stared out of her wan, weary eyes against the red and stormy
flares of light that came into the sky.
When, an hour after sunrise, Sheen Macarthur reached her bothy, she found
Neil Ross, heavy with slumber, upon her bed. The fire was not out, though
no flame or spark was visible; but she stooped and blew at the heart
of the peats till the redness came, and once it came it grew. Having
done this, she kneeled and said a rune of the morning, and after that a
prayer, and then a prayer for the poor man Neil. She could pray no more
because of the tears. She rose and put the meal and water into the pot
for the porridge to be ready against his awaking. One of the hens that
was there came and pecked at her ragged skirt. “Poor beastie,” she said.
“Sure, that will just be the way I am pulling at the white robe of the
Mother o’ God. ’Tis a bit meal for you, cluckie, and for me a healing
hand upon my tears. O, och, ochone, the tears, the tears!”
It was not till the third hour after sunrise of that bleak day in that
winter of the winters, that Neil Ross stirred and arose. He ate in
silence. Once he said that he smelt the snow coming out of the north.
Sheen said no word at all.
After the porridge, he took his pipe, but there was no tobacco. All that
Sheen had was the pipeful she kept against the gloom of the Sabbath. It
was her one solace in the long weary week. She gave him this, and held a
burning peat to his mouth, and hungered over the thin, rank smoke that
curled upward.
It was within half-an-hour of noon that, after an absence, she returned.
“Not between you and me, Neil Ross,” she began abruptly, “but just for
the asking, and what is beyond. Is it any money you are having upon you?”
“No.”
“Nothing?”
“Nothing.”
“Then how will you be getting across to Iona? It is seven long miles to
Fionnaphort, and bitter cold at that, and you will be needing food, and
then the ferry, the ferry across the Sound, you know.”
“Ay, I know.”
“What would you do for a silver piece, Neil, my man?”
“You have none to give me, Sheen Macarthur; and, if you had, it would not
be taking it I would.”
“Would you kiss a dead man for a crown-piece--a crown-piece of five good
shillings?”
Neil Ross stared. Then he sprang to his feet.
“It is Adam Blair you are meaning, woman! God curse him in death now that
he is no longer in life!”
Then, shaking and trembling, he sat down again, and brooded against the
dull red glow of the peats.
But, when he rose, in the last quarter before noon, his face was white.
“The dead are dead, Sheen Macarthur. They can know or do nothing. I will
do it. It is willed. Yes, I am going up to the house there. And now I am
going from here. God Himself has my thanks to you, and my blessing too.
They will come back to you. It is not forgetting you I will be. Good-bye.”
“Good-bye, Neil, son of the woman that was my friend. A south wind to
you! Go up by the farm. In the front of the house you will see what you
will be seeing. Maisie Macdonald will be there. She will tell you what’s
for the telling. There is no harm in it, sure: sure, the dead are dead.
It is praying for you I will be, Neil Ross. Peace to you!”
“And to you, Sheen.”
And with that the man went.
* * * * *
When Neil Ross reached the byres of the farm in the wide hollow, he saw
two figures standing as though awaiting him, but separate, and unseen of
the other. In front of the house was a man he knew to be Andrew Blair;
behind the milk-shed was a woman he guessed to be Maisie Macdonald.
It was the woman he came upon first.
“Are you the friend of Sheen Macarthur?” she asked in a whisper, as she
beckoned him to the doorway.
“I am.”
“I am knowing no names or anything. And no one here will know you, I am
thinking. So do the thing and begone.”
“There is no harm to it?”
“None.”
“It will be a thing often done, is it not?”
“Ay, sure.”
“And the evil does not abide?”
“No. The … the … person … the person takes them away, and …”
“_Them?_”
“For sure, man! Them … the sins of the corpse. He takes them away; and
are you for thinking God would let the innocent suffer for the guilty? No
… the person … the Sin-Eater, you know … takes them away on himself, and
one by one the air of heaven washes them away till he, the Sin-Eater, is
clean and whole as before.”
“But if it is a man you hate … if it is a corpse that is the corpse of
one who has been a curse and a foe … if …”
“_Sst!_ Be still now with your foolishness. It is only an idle saying,
I am thinking. Do it, and take the money and go. It will be hell enough
for Adam Blair, miser as he was, if he is for knowing that five good
shillings of his money are to go to a passing tramp because of an old,
ancient silly tale.”
Neil Ross laughed low at that. It was for pleasure to him.
“Hush wi’ ye! Andrew Blair is waiting round there. Say that I have sent
you round, as I have neither bite nor bit to give.”
Turning on his heel, Neil walked slowly round to the front of the house.
A tall man was there, gaunt and brown, with hairless face and lank brown
hair, but with eyes cold and grey as the sea.
“Good day to you, an’ good faring. Will you be passing this way to
anywhere?”
“Health to you. I am a stranger here. It is on my way to Iona I am. But I
have the hunger upon me. There is not a brown bit in my pocket. I asked
at the door there, near the byres. The woman told me she could give me
nothing--not a penny even, worse luck,--nor, for that, a drink of warm
milk. ’Tis a sore land this.”
“You have the Gaelic of the Isles. Is it from Iona you are?”
“It is from the Isles of the West I come.”
“From Tiree? … from Coll?”
“No.”
“From the Long Island … or from Uist … or maybe from Benbecula?”
“No.”
“Oh well, sure it is no matter to me. But may I be asking your name?”
“Macallum.”
“Do you know there is a death here, Macallum?”
“If I didn’t, I would know it now, because of what lies yonder.”
Mechanically Andrew Blair looked round. As he knew, a rough bier was
there, that was made of a dead-board laid upon three milking-stools.
Beside it was a _claar_, a small tub to hold potatoes. On the bier was a
corpse, covered with a canvas sheeting that looked like a sail.
“He was a worthy man, my father,” began the son of the dead man, slowly;
“but he had his faults, like all of us. I might even be saying that he
had his sins, to the Stones be it said. You will be knowing, Macallum,
what is thought among the folk … that a stranger, passing by, may take
away the sins of the dead, and that, too, without any hurt whatever … any
hurt whatever.”
“Ay, sure.”
“And you will be knowing what is done?”
“Ay.”
“With the bread … and the water…?”
“Ay.”
“It is a small thing to do. It is a Christian thing. I would be doing it
myself, and that gladly, but the … the … passer-by who …”
“It is talking of the Sin-Eater you are?”
“Yes, yes, for sure. The Sin-Eater as he is called--and a good Christian
act it is, for all that the ministers and the priests make a frowning at
it--the Sin-Eater must be a stranger. He must be a stranger, and should
know nothing of the dead man--above all, bear him no grudge.”
At that Neil Ross’s eyes lightened for a moment.
“And why that?”