Neil Ross upon the rock, he had followed him when he rose, and wandered
back to the roofless place which he haunted now as of yore. Less
wretched a shelter now it was, because of the summer that was come,
though a cold, wet summer at that.
“Is that you, Neil Ross?” he had asked, as he peered into the shadows
among the ruins of the house.
“That’s not my name,” said the Sin-Eater; and he seemed as strange then
and there, as though he were a castaway from a foreign ship.
“And what will it be, then, you that are my friend, and sure knowing me
as Aulay mac Luais--Aulay Macneill that never grudges you bit or sup?”
“_I am Judas._”
* * * * *
“And at that word,” says Aulay Macneill, when he tells the tale, “at that
word the pulse in my heart was like a bat in a shut room. But after a bit
I took up the talk.
“‘Indeed,’ I said; ‘and I was not for knowing that. May I be so bold as
to ask whose son, and of what place?’
“But all he said to me was, ‘_I am Judas._’
“Well, I said, to comfort him, ‘Sure, it’s not such a bad name in
itself, though I am knowing some which have a more home-like sound.’ But
no, it was no good.
“‘I am Judas. And because I sold the Son of God for five pieces of
silver …’
“But here I interrupted him and said,--‘Sure, now, Neil--I mean,
Judas--it was eight times five.’ Yet the simpleness of his sorrow
prevailed, and I listened with the wet in my eyes.
“‘I am Judas. And because I sold the Son of God for five silver
shillings, He laid upon me all the nameless black sins of the world. And
that is why I am bearing them till the Day of Days.’”
* * * * *
And this was the end of the Sin-Eater; for I will not tell the long story
of Aulay Macneill, that gets longer and longer every winter: but only the
unchanging close of it.
I will tell it in the words of Aulay.
* * * * *
“A bitter, wild day it was, that day I saw him to see him no more. It
was late. The sea was red with the flamin’ light that burned up the air
betwixt Iona and all that is west of West. I was on the shore, looking
at the sea. The big green waves came in like the chariots in the Holy
Book. Well, it was on the black shoulder of one of them, just short of
the ton o’ foam that swept above it, that I saw a spar surgin’ by.
“‘What is that?’ I said to myself. And the reason of my wondering was
this: I saw that a smaller spar was swung across it. And while I was
watching that thing another great billow came in with a roar, and hurled
the double spar back, and not so far from me but I might have gripped it.
But who would have gripped that thing if he were for seeing what I saw?
“It is Himself knows that what I say is a true thing.
“On that spar was Neil Ross, the Sin-Eater. Naked he was as the day he
was born. And he was lashed, too--ay, sure, he was lashed to it by ropes
round and round his legs and his waist and his left arm. It was the Cross
he was on. I saw that thing with the fear upon me. Ah, poor drifting
wreck that he was! _Judas on the Cross_: It was his _eric_!
“But even as I watched, shaking in my limbs, I saw that there was life
in him still. The lips were moving, and his right arm was ever for
swinging this way and that. ’Twas like an oar, working him off a lee
shore: ay, that was what I thought.
“Then, all at once, he caught sight of me. Well he knew me, poor man,
that has his share of heaven now, I am thinking!
“He waved, and called, but the hearing could not be, because of a big
surge o’ water that came tumbling down upon him. In the stroke of an
oar he was swept close by the rocks where I was standing. In that
flounderin’, seethin’ whirlpool I saw the white face of him for a moment,
an’ as he went out on the re-surge like a hauled net, I heard these words
fallin’ against my ears,--
“‘_An eirig m’anama_ … In ransom for my soul!’
“And with that I saw the double-spar turn over and slide down the
back-sweep of a drowning big wave. Ay, sure, it went out to the deep sea
swift enough then. It was in the big eddy that rushes between Skerry-Mòr
and Skerry-Beag. I did not see it again--no, not for the quarter of an
hour, I am thinking. Then I saw just the whirling top of it rising out
of the flying yeast of a great, black-blustering wave, that was rushing
northward before the current that is called the Black-Eddy.
“With that you have the end of Neil Ross: ay, sure, him that was called
the Sin-Eater. And that is a true thing; and may God save us the sorrow
of sorrows.
“And that is all.”
_THE NINTH WAVE_
THE NINTH WAVE
The wind fell as we crossed the Sound. There was only one oar in the
boat, and we lay idly adrift. The tide was still on the ebb, and so we
made way for Soa; though, well before the island could be reached, the
tide would turn, and the sea-wind would stir, and we be up the Sound and
at Balliemore again almost as quick as the laying of a net.
As we--and by “us” I am meaning Phadric Macrae and Ivor McLean, fishermen
of Iona, and myself beside Ivor at the helm--as we slid slowly past the
ragged islet known as Eilean-na-h’ Aon-Chaorach, torn and rent by the
tides and surges of a thousand years, I saw a school of seals basking in
the sun. One by one slithered into the water, and I could note the dark
forms, like moving patches of sea-weed, drifting in the green underglooms.
Then, after a time, we bore down upon Sgeir-na-Oir, a barren rock. Three
great cormorants stood watching us. Their necks shone in the sunlight
like snakes mailed in blue and green. On the upper ledges were eight or
ten northern-divers. They did not seem to see us, though I knew that
their fierce light-blue eyes noted every motion we made. The small
sea-ducks bobbed up and down, first one flirt of a little black-feathered
rump, then another, then a third, till a score or so were under water,
and half-a-hundred more were ready at a moment’s notice to follow suit.
A skua hopped among the sputtering weed, and screamed disconsolately at
intervals. Among the myriad colonies of close-set mussels, which gave
a blue bloom like that of the sloe to the weed-covered boulders, a few
kittiwakes and dotterels flitted to and fro. High overhead, white against
the blue as a cloudlet, a gannet hung motionless, seemingly frozen to the
sky.
Below the lapse of the boat the water was pale green. I could see the
liath and saith fanning their fins in slow flight, and sometimes a little
scurrying cloud of tiny flukies and inch-long codling. For two or three
fathoms beyond the boat the waters were blue. If blueness can be alive
and have its own life and movement, it must be happy on these western
seas, where it dreams into shadowy Lethes of amethyst and deep, dark
oblivions of violet.
Suddenly a streak of silver ran for a moment along the sea to starboard.
It was like an arrow of moonlight shot along the surface of the blue and
gold. Almost immediately afterward, a stertorous sigh was audible. A
black knife cut the flow of the water: the shoulder of a pollack.
“The mackerel are coming in from the sea,” said Macrae. He leaned
forward, wet the palm of his hand, and held it seaward. “Ay, the tide has
turned----”
_“Ohrone--achree--an--Srùth-màra!_
_Ohrone--achree--an--Lionadh!”_
he droned monotonously, over and over, with few variations.
“An’ it’s Oh an’ Oh for the tides o’ the sea,
An’ it’s Oh for the flowing tide,”
I sang at last in mockery.
“Come, Phadric,” I cried, “you are as bad as Peter McAlpin’s lassie,
Fiona, with the pipes!”
Both men laughed lightly. On the last Sabbath, old McAlpin had held a
prayer-meeting in his little house in the “street,” in Balliemore of
Iona. At the end of his discourse he told his hearers that the voice of
God was terrible only to the evil-doer, but beautiful to the righteous
man, and that this voice was even now among them, speaking in a thousand
ways, and yet in one way. And at this moment, that elfin granddaughter
of his, who was in the byre close by, let go upon the pipes with so long
and weary a whine that the collies by the fire whimpered, and would have
howled outright but for the Word of God that still lay open on the big
stool in front of old Peter. For it was in this way that the dogs knew
when the Sabbath readings were over, and there was not one that would
dare to bark or howl, much less rise and go out, till the Book was closed
with a loud, solemn bang. Well, again and again that weary quavering moan
went up and down the room, till even old McAlpin smiled, though he was
fair angry with Fiona. But he made the sign of silence, and began: “My
brethren, even in this trial it may be the Almighty has a message for
us----,” when at that moment Fiona was kicked by a cow, and fell against
the board with the pipes, and squeezed out so wild a wail that McAlpin
started up and cried, in the Lowland way that he had won out of his wife,
“_Hoots, havers, an’ a’! come oot o’ that, ye deil’s spunkie!_”
So it was this memory that made Phadric and Ivor smile. Suddenly Ivor
began, with a long rising and falling cadence, an old Gaelic rune of the
Faring of the Tide:
_“Athair, A mhic, A Spioraid Naoimh,_
_Biodh an Tri-aon leinn, a la’s a dh’ oidhche;_
_S’ air chul nan tonn, no air thaobh nam beann!”_
“O Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,
Be the Three-in-One with us day and night,
On the crested wave, when waves run high!”
And out of the place in the West
Where Tir-nan-Òg, the Land of Youth
Is, the Land of Youth everlasting,
Send the great tide that carries the sea-weed
And brings the birds, out of the North:
And bid it wind as a snake through the bracken,
As a great snake through the heather of the sea,
The fair blooming heather of the sunlit sea.
And may it bring the fish to our nets,
And the great fish to our lines:
And may it sweep away the sea-hounds
That devour the herring:
And may it drown the heavy pollack
That respect not our nets
But fall into and tear them and ruin them wholly.
And may I, or any that is of my blood,
Behold not the Wave-Haunter who comes in with the Tide;
Or the Maighdeann-màra who broods in the shallows,
Where the sea-caves are, in the ebb:
And fair may my fishing be, and the fishing of those near to me,
And good may this Tide be, and good may it bring:
And may there be no calling in the Flow, this Srùth-màra,
And may there be no burden in the Ebb! _ochone!_
_An ainm an Athar, s’ an Mhic, s’ an Spioraid Naoimh,_
_Biodh an Tri-aon leinn, a la’s a dh’ oidhche,_
_S’ air chul nan tonn, no air thaobh nam beann!_
_Ochone! arone!_
Both men sang the closing lines, with loudly swelling voices, and with a
wailing fervour which no words of mine could convey.
Runes of this kind prevail all over the isles, from the Butt of Lewis to
the Rhinns of Islay: identical in spirit, though varying in lines and
phrases, according to the mood and temperament of the _rannaiche_ or
singer, the local or peculiar physiognomy of nature, the instinctive
yielding to hereditary wonder-words, and other compelling circumstances
of the outer and inner life. Almost needless to say, the sea-maid or
sea-witch and the Wave-Haunter occur in many of those wild runes,
particularly in those that are impromptu. In the Outer Hebrides, the
runes are wild natural hymns rather than Pagan chants: though marked
distinctions prevail there also,--for in Harris and the Lews the folk are
Protestant almost to a man, while in Benbecula and the Southern Hebrides
the Catholics are in a like ascendancy. But all are at one in the common
Brotherhood of Sorrow.
The only lines in Ivor McLean’s wailing song which puzzled me were the
two last which came before “the good words,” “in the name of the Father,
the Son, and the Spirit,” etc.
“Tell me, in English, Ivor,” I said, after a silence, wherein I pondered
the Gaelic words, “what is the meaning of
“‘And may there be no calling in the Flow, this Srùth-màra,
And may there be no burden in the Ebb’?”
“Yes, I will be telling you what is the meaning of that. When the great
tide that wells out of the hollow of the sea, and sweeps towards all
the coasts of the world, first stirs, when she will be knowing that the
Ebb is not any more moving at all, she sends out nine long waves. And
I will be forgetting what these waves are: but one will be to shepherd
the sea-weed that is for the blessing of man; and another is for to wake
the fish that sleep in the deeps; and another is for this, and another
will be for that; and the seventh is to rouse the Wave-Haunter and all
the creatures of the water that fear and hate man; and the eighth no man
knows, though the priests say it is to carry the Whisper of Mary; and the
ninth----”
“And the ninth, Ivor?”
“May it be far from us, from you and from me, and from those of us. An’ I
will be sayin’ nothing against it, not I; nor against anything that is in
the sea. An’ you will be noting that!
“Well, this ninth wave goes through the water on the forehead of the
tide. An’ wherever it will be going it _calls_. An’ the call of it
is--‘_Come away, come away, the sea waits! Follow!… Come away, come away,
the sea waits! Follow!_’[10] An’ whoever hears that must arise and go,
whether he be fish or pollack, or seal or otter, or great skua or small
tern, or bird or beast of the shore, or bird or beast of the sea, or
whether it be man or woman or child, or any of the others.”
[10] Ivor, of course, gave these words in the Gaelic, the sound of
which has the sweet wail of the sea in it.
“_Any of the others_, Ivor?”
“I will not be saying anything about that,” replied McLean gravely; “you
will be knowing well what I mean, and if you do not it is not for me to
talk of that which is not to be talked about.
“Well, as I was for saying, that calling of the ninth wave of the Tide
is what Ian Mòr of the hills speaks of as ‘the whisper of the snow that
falls on the hair, the whisper of the frost that lies on the cold face of
him that will never be waking again.’”
“_Death?_”
“It is _you_ that will be saying it.”
“Well,” he resumed, after a moment’s hush, “a man may live by the sea for
five-score years and never hear that ninth wave call in any _Srùth-màra_;
but soon or late he will hear it. An’ many is the Flood that will be
silent for all of us; but there will be one Flood for each of us that
will be a dreadful Voice, a voice of terror and of dreadfulness. And
whoever hears that voice, he for sure will be the burden in the Ebb.”
“Has any heard that Voice, and lived?”
McLean looked at me, but said nothing. Phadric Macrae rose, tautened a
rope, and made a sign to me to put the helm a-lee. Then, looking into
the green water slipping by--for the tide was feeling our keel, and a
stronger breath from the sea lay against the hollow that was growing in
the sail--he said to Ivor:
“You should be telling her of Ivor MacIvor Mhic Niall.”
“Who was Ivor MacNeill?” I said.
“He was the father of my mother,” answered McLean, “and was known
throughout the north isles as Ivor Carminish: for he had a farm on the
eastern lands of Carminish which lie between the hills called Strondeval
and Rondeval, that are in the far south of the Northern Hebrides, and
near what will be known to you as the Obb of Harris.
“And I will now be telling you about him in the Gaelic, for it is more
easy to me, and more pleasant for us all.
“When Ivor MacEachainn Carminish, that was Ivor’s father, died, he left
the farm to his elder son, and to his second son Sheumais. By this time
Ivor was married, and had the daughter who is my mother. But he was a
lonely man, and an islesman to the heart’s core. So … but you will be
knowing the isles that lie off the Obb of Harris: the Saghay, and Ensay,
and Killegray, and, farther west, Berneray; and north-west, Pabaidh; and,
beyond that again, Shillaidh?”
For the moment I was confused, for these names are so common: and I was
thinking of the big isle of Berneray that lies in huge Loch Roag that has
swallowed so great a mouthful of Western Lewis, to the seaward of which
also are the two Pabbays, Pabaidh Mòr and Pabaidh Beag. But when McLean
added, “and other isles of the Caolas Harrish (the Sound of Harris),” I
remembered aright; and indeed I knew both, though the nor’ isles better,
for I had lived near Callernish on the inner waters of Roag.
“Well, Carminish had sheep-runs upon some of these. One summer the gloom
came upon him, and he left Sheumais to take care of the farm, and of
Morag his wife, and of Sheen their daughter; and he went to live upon
Pabbay, near the old castle that is by the Rua Dune on the south-east
of the isle. There he stayed for three months. But on the last night of
each month he heard the sea calling in his sleep; and what he heard was
like ‘_Come away, come away, the sea waits! Follow!_… _Come away, come
away, the sea waits! Follow!_’ And he knew the voice of the ninth wave;
and that it would not be there in the darkness of sleep if it were not
already moving towards him through the dark ways of _An Dàn_ (Destiny).
So, thinking to pass away from a place doomed for him, and that he might
be safe elsewhere, he sailed north to a kinsman’s croft on Aird-Vanish
in the island of Taransay. But at the end of that month he heard in his
sleep the noise of tidal waters, and at the gathering of the ebb he heard
‘_Come away, come away, the sea waits! Follow!_’ Then once more, when
the November heat-spell had come he sailed farther northward still.
He stopped awhile at Eilean Mhealastaidh, which is under the morning
shadow of high Griomabhal on the mainland, and at other places; till he
settled, in the third week, at his cousin Eachainn MacEachainn’s bothy,
near Callernish, where the Great Stones of old stand by the sea, and hear
nothing for ever but the noise of the waves of the North Sea and the cry
of the sea-wind.
“And when the last night of November had come and gone, and he had heard
in his sleep no calling of the ninth wave of the Flowing Tide, he took
heart of grace. All through that next day he went in peace. Eachainn
wondered often with slant eyes when he saw the morose man smile, and
heard his silence give way now and again to a short, mirthless laugh.
“The two were at the porridge, and Eachainn was muttering his _Bui’cheas
dha’n Ti_, the Thanks to the Being, when Carminish suddenly leaped to his
feet, and, with white face, stood shaking like a rope in the wind.
“‘In the name of the Son, what is it, Ivor Mhic Ivor? What is it,
Carminish?’ cried Eachainn.
“But the stricken man could scarce speak. At last, with a long sigh,
he turned and looked at his kinsman, and that look went down into the
shivering heart like the polar wind into a crofter’s hut.
“‘_What will be that?_’ said Carminish, in a hoarse whisper.
“Eachainn listened, but he could hear no wailing _beann-sith_, no
unwonted sound.
“‘Sure, I hear nothing but the wind moaning through the Great Stones, an’
beyond them the noise of the Flowin’ Tide.’
“‘The Flowing Tide! the Flowing Tide!’ cried Carminish, and no longer
with the hush in the voice. ‘An’ what is it you hear in the Flowing Tide?’
“Eachainn looked in silence. What was the thing he could say? For now he
knew.
“‘Ah, och, och, ochone, you may well sigh, Eachainn Mhic Eachainn! For
the ninth wave o’ the Flowing Tide is coming out o’ the North Sea upon
this shore, an’ already I can hear it calling ‘_Come away, come away, the
sea waits! Follow!_… _Come away, come away, the sea waits! Follow!_’
“And with that Carminish dashed out the light that was upon the table,
and leaped upon Eachainn, and dinged him to the floor, and would have
killed him, but for the growing noise of the sea beyond the Stannin’
Stones o’ Callernish, and the woe-weary sough o’ the wind, an’ the
calling, calling, ‘_Come, come away!_ _Come, come away!_’
“And so he rose and staggered to the door, and flung himself out into the
night: while Eachainn lay upon the floor and gasped for breath, and then
crawled to his knees, an’ took the Book from the shelf by his fern-straw
mattress, an’ put his cheek against it, an’ moaned to God, an’ cried like
a child for the doom that was upon Ivor McIvor Mhic Niall, who was of his
own blood, and his own _dall_ at that.
“And while he moaned, Carminish was stalking through the great, gaunt,
looming Stones of the Druids that were here before St Colum and his
_Shona_ came, and laughing wild. And all the time the tide was coming in,
and the tide and the deep sea and the waves of the shore, and the wind in
the salt grass and the weary reeds and the black-pool gale, made a noise
of a dreadful hymn, that was the death-hymn, the going-rune of Ivor the
son of Ivor of the kindred of Niall.
“And it was there that they found his body in the grey dawn, wet and
stiff with the salt ooze. For the soul that was in him had heard the call
of the ninth wave that was for him. So, and may the Being keep back that
hour for us, there was a burden upon that ebb on the morning of that day.
“Also, there is this thing for the hearing. In the dim dark before the
curlew cried at dawn, Eachainn heard a voice about the house, a voice
going like a thing blind and baffled,
_“‘Cha till, cha till, cha till mi tuille!’”_
(I return, I return, I return never more!)
_THE JUDGMENT O’ GOD_
THE JUDGMENT O’ GOD
The wind that blows on the feet of the dead came calling loud across the
Ross as we put about the boat off the Rudhe Callachain. The ebb sucked
at the keel, while, like a cork, we were swung lightly by the swell. For
we were in the strait between Eilean Dubh and the Isle of the Swine; and
that is where the current has a bad pull--the current that is made of the
inflow and the outflow. I have heard that a weary woman of the olden days
broods down there in a cave, and that day and night she weaves a web of
water, which a fierce spirit in the sea tears this way and that as soon
as woven.
So we put about, and went before the east wind: and below the dip of the
sail a-lee I watched Soa grow bigger and gaunter and blacker against the
white wave. As we came so near that it was as though the wash of the sea
among the hollows bubbled in our ears, I saw a large bull-seal lying
half-in half-out of the water, and staring at us with an angry, fearless
look.
Phadric and Ivor caught sight of it almost at the same moment.
To my surprise Macrae suddenly rose and put a rosad upon it. I could hear
the wind through his clothes as he stood by the mast.
The rosad or spell was, of course, in the Gaelic; but its meaning was
something like this--
_Ho, ro, O Ron dubh, O Ron dubh!_
_An ainm an Athar, O Ron!_
_’S an mhic, O Ron!_
_’S an Spioraid Naoimh._
_O Ron-à-mhàra, O Ron dubh!_
Ho, ro, O black Seal, O black Seal!
In the name of the Father,
And of the Son,
And of the Holy Ghost,
O Seal of the deep sea, O black Seal!
Hearken the thing that I say to thee,
I, Phadric MacAlastair MhicCrae,
Who dwell in a house on the Island
That you look on night and day from Soa!
For I put _rosad_ upon thee,
And upon the woman-seal that won thee,
And the women-seal that are thine,
And the young that thou hast;
Ay, upon thee and all thy kin
I put _rosad_, O Ron dubh, O Ron-à-mhàra!
And may no harm come to me or mine,
Or to any fishing or snaring that is of me;
Or to any sailing by storm or dusk,
Or when the moonshine fills the blind eyes of the dead,
No harm to me or mine
From thee or thine!
With a slow swinging motion of his head Phadric broke out again into the
first words of the incantation, and now Ivor joined him; and with the
call of the wind and the leaping and the splashing of the waves was blent
the chant of the two fishermen--
_Ho, ro, O Ron dubh, O Ron dubh!_
_An ainm an Athar, ’s an Mhic, ’s an Spioriad Naoimh,_
_O Ron-à-mhàra, O Ron dubh!_
Then the men sat back, with that dazed look in the eyes I have so often
seen in those of men or women of the Isles who are wrought. No word was
spoken till we came almost straight upon Eilean-na-h’ Aon-Chaorach. Then
at the rocks we tacked, and went splashing up the Sound like a pollack on
a Sabbath noon.[11]
[11] The Iona fishermen, and, indeed, the Gaelic and Scottish
fishermen generally, believe that the pollack (porpoise) knows when
it is the Sabbath, and on that day will come closer to the land,
and be more wanton in its gambols on the sun-warmed surface of the
sea, than on the days when the herring-boats are abroad.
“What was wrong with the old man of the sea?” I asked Macrae.
At first he would say nothing. He looked vaguely at a coiled rope; then,
with hand-shaded gaze, across to the red rocks at Fionnaphort. I repeated
my question. He took refuge in English.
“It wass ferry likely the _Clansman_ would be pringing ta new
minister-body. Did you pe knowing him, or his people, or where he came
from?”