green-shelving lawns of the sea below us, Phadric told me this thing.
His reluctance was partly due to the shyness which, with the Gael,
almost invariably follows strong emotion, and partly to that strange,
obscure, secretive instinct which is also so characteristically Celtic,
and often prevents Gaels of far apart isles, or of different clans, from
communicating to each other stories or legends of a peculiarly intimate
kind.
“I will tell you what my father told me, and what, if you like, you may
hear again from the sister of my father, who is the wife of Ian Finlay,
who has the farm on the north side of Dûn-I.
“You will have heard of old James Achanna of Eilanmore, off the Ord o’
Sutherland? To be sure, for have you not stayed there. Well, I need not
tell you how he came there out of the south, but it will be news to you
to learn that my elder brother Murdoch was had by him as a shepherd, and
to help on the farm. And the way of that thing was this. Murdoch had gone
to the fishing north of Skye, with Angus and William Macdonald, and in
the great gale that broke up their boat, among so many others, he found
himself stranded on Eilanmore. Achanna told him that, as he was ruined,
and so far from home, he would give him employment; and though Murdoch
had never thought to serve under a Galloway man, he agreed.
“For a year he worked on the upper farm, Ardoch-beag as it was called.
There the gloom came upon him. Turn which way he would, the beauty that
is in the day was no more. In vain, when he came out into the air in the
morning did he cry _Deasiul_! and keep by the sun-way. At night he heard
the sea calling in his sleep. So, when the lambing was over, he told
Achanna that he must go, for he hungered for the sea. True, the wave ran
all around Eilanmore, but the farm was between bare hills and among high
moors, and the house was in a hollow place. But it was needful for him to
go. Even then, though he did not know it, the madness of the sea was upon
him.
“But the Galloway man did not wish to lose my brother, who was a quiet
man, and worked for a small wage. Murdoch was a silent lad, but he had
often the light in his eyes, and none knew of what he was thinking: maybe
it was of a lass, or a friend, or of the ingle-neuk where his old mother
sang o’ nights, or of the sight and sound of Iona that was his own land;
but I’m considerin’ it was the sea he was dreamin’ of, how the waves ran
laughin’ an’ dancin’ against the tide, like lambkins comin’ to meet the
shepherd, or how the big green billows went sweepin’ white an’ ghostly
through the moonless nights.
“So the troth that was come to between them was this: that Murdoch should
abide for a year longer, that is till Lammastide; then that he should no
longer live at Ardoch-beag, but, instead, should go and keep the sheep on
Bac-Mòr.”
* * * * *
“On Bac-Mòr, Phadric,” I interrupted, “for sure, you do not mean _our_
Bac-Mòr?”
“For sure, I mean no other: Bac-Mòr, of the Treshnish Isles, that is
eleven miles north of Iona, and a long four north-west of Staffa: an’
just Bac-Mòr, an’ no other.”
“Murdoch would be near home, there.”
“Ay, near, an’ farther away: for ’tis to be farther off to be near that
which your heart loves but ye can’t get.”
* * * * *
“Well, Murdoch agreed to this, but he did not know there was no boat
on the island. It was all very well in the summer. The herrin’ smacks
lay off Bac-Mòr or Bac-beag many a time; and he could see them mornin’,
noon, an’ night; an’ nigh every day he could watch the big steamer comin’
southward down the Mornish and Treshnish coasts of Mull, and stand by
for an hour off Staffa, or else come northward out of the Sound of Iona
round the Eilean Rabach; and once or twice a week he saw the _Clansman_
coming or going from Bunessan in the Ross to Scarnish in the Isle of
Tiree. Maybe, too, now and again, a foreign sloop or a coasting schooner
would sail by; and twice, at least, a yacht lay off the wild shore, and
put a boat in at the landing-place, and let some laughing folk loose upon
that quiet place. The first time it was a steam yacht, owned by a rich
foreigner, either an Englishman or an American,--I misremember now,--an’
he spoke to Murdoch as though he were a savage, and he and his gay folk
laughed when my brother spoke in the only English he had (an’ sober, good
English it was), an’ then he shoves some money into his hand, as though
both were evil-doers and were ashamed to be seen doing what they did.
“‘An’ what is this for?’ said my brother.
“‘Oh, it’s for yourself, my man, to drink our health with,’ answered the
English lord, or whatever he was, rudely. Then Murdoch looked at him and
his quietly, an’ he said, ‘God has your health an’ my health in the
hollow of His hands. But I wish you well. Only, I am not being your man,
any more than I am for calling _you_, _my_ man; an’ I will ask you to
take back this money to drink with; nor have I any need for money, but
only for that which is free to all, but that only God can give,’ And with
that the foreign people went away, and laughed less. But when the second
yacht came, though it was a yawl and owned by a Glasgow man who had folk
in the west, Murdoch would not come down to the shore, but lay under the
shadow of a rock amid his sheep, and kept his eyes upon the sun that was
moving west out of the south.
“Well, all through the fine months Murdoch stayed on Bac-Mòr, and
thereafter through the early winter. The last time I saw him was at the
New Year. On Hogmanay night my father was drinking hard, and nothing
would serve him but he must borrow Alec Macarthur’s boat, and that he and
our mother and myself, and Ian Finlay and his wife, my sister, should go
out before the quiet south wind that was blowing, and see Murdoch where
he lay sleeping or sat dreaming in his lonely bothy. And, truth, we went.
It was a white sailing that I remember. The moon-shinings ran in and out
of the wavelets like herrings through salmon nets. The fire-flauchts,
too, went speeding about. I was but a laddie then, an’ I noted it all;
an’ the sheet-lightning that played behind the cloudy lift in the
nor’-west.
“But when we got to Bac-Mòr there was no sign of Murdoch at the bothy:
no, not though we called high and low. Then my father and Ian Finlay went
to look, and we stayed by the peats. When they came back, an hour later,
I saw that my father was no more in drink. He had the same look in his
eyes as Ronald McLean had that day last winter when they told him his bit
girlie had been caught by the small-pox in Glasgow.
“I could not hear, or I could not make out, what was said; but I know
that we all got into the boat again, all except my father. And he stayed.
And next day Ian Finlay and Alec Macarthur went out to Bac-Mòr, and
brought him back.
“And from him and from Ian I knew all there was to be known. It was a
hard New Year for all, and since that day, till a night of which I will
tell you, my father brooded and drank, drank and brooded, and my mother
wept through the winter gloamings and spent the nights starin’ into the
peats, wi’ her knittin’ lyin’ on her lap.
“For when they had gone to seek Murdoch that Hogmanay night, they came
upon him away from his sheep. But this was what they saw. There was a
black rock that stood out in the moonshine, with the water all about it;
and on this rock Murdoch lay naked, and laughing wild. An’ every now and
then he would lean forward and stretch his arms out, an’ call to his
dearie. An’ at last, just as the watchers, shiverin’ wi’ fear an’ awe,
were going to close in upon him, they saw a--a--thing--come out o’ the
water. It was long an’ dark, an’ Ian said its eyes were like clots o’
blood; but as to that no man can say yea or nay, for Ian himself admits
it was a seal.
“An’ this thing is true, _an ainm an Athar_! they saw the dark beast o’
the sea creep on to the rock beside Murdoch, an’ lie down beside him,
and let him clasp an’ kiss it. An’ then he stood up, and laughed till the
skin crept on those who heard, and cried out on his dearie and on a’ the
dumb things o’ the sea, an’ the Wave-Haunter an’ the Grey Shadow; an’
he raised his hands, an’ cursed the world o’ men, and cried out to God,
‘_Turn your face to your own airidh, O God, an’ may rain an’ storm an’
snow be between us!_’
“An’ wi’ that, Deirg, his collie, could bide no more, but loupit across
the water, and was on the rock beside him, wi’ his fell bristling like a
hedge-rat. For both the naked man an’ the wet, gleamin’ beast, a great
she-seal out o’ the north, turned upon Deirg, an’ he fought for his
life. But what could the puir thing do? The seal buried her fangs in his
shoulder at last, an’ pinned him to the ground. Then Murdoch stooped,
an’ dragged her off, an’ bent down an’ tore at the throat o’ Deirg wi’
his own teeth. Ay, God’s truth it is! An’ when the collie was stark, he
took him up by the hind legs an’ the tail, an’ swung him round an’ round
his head, an’ whirled him into the sea, where he fell black in a white
splatch o’ the moon.
“An’ wi’ that, Murdoch slipped, and reeled backward into the sea, his
hands gripping at the whirling stars. An’ the thing beside him louped
after him, an’ my father an’ Ian heard a cry an’ a cryin’ that made their
hearts sob. But when they got down to the rock they saw nothing, except
the floating body o’ Deirg.
“Sure it was a weary night for the old man, there on Bac-Mòr by himself,
with that awful thing that had happened. He stayed there to see and hear
what might be seen and heard. But nothing he heard--nothing saw. It was
afterwards that he heard how Donncha MacDonald was on Bac-Mòr three
days before this, and how Murdoch had told him he was in love wi’ a
_maighdeann-mhara_, a sea-maid.
“But this thing has to be known. It was a month later, on the night o’
the full moon, that Ian Finlay and Ian Macarthur and Sheumais Macallum
were upset in the calm water inside the Sound, just off Port-na-Frang,
and were nigh drowned, but that they called upon God and the Son, and so
escaped, and heard no more the laughter of Murdoch from the sea.
“And at midnight my father heard the voice of his eldest son at the door;
but he would not let him in. And in the morning he found his boat broken
and shred in splinters, and his one net all torn. An’ that day was the
Sabbath; so, being a holy day, he took the Scripture with him, an’ he and
Neil Morrison the minister, having had the Bread an’ Wine, went along
the Sound in a boat, following a shadow in the water, till they came to
Soa. An’ there Neil Morrison read the Word o’ God to the seals that lay
baskin’ in the sun; and one, a female, snarled and showed her fangs; and
another, a black one, lifted its head and made a noise that was not like
the barking of any seal, but was as the laughter of Murdoch when he swung
the dead body of Deirg.
“And that is all that is to be said. And silence is best now between you
and any other. And no man knows the judgments o’ God.
“And that is all.”
_GREEN BRANCHES_
_NOTE_
This story is one of the Achanna series, of which “The Anointed Man” is
in _Spiritual Tales_, and “The Dàn-nan-Ròn” is in the present volume--to
which, indeed, “Green Branches” is properly a sequel. (See the note to
“The Dàn-nan-Ròn” about the name ‘Gloom.’ I may add here that the surname
Achanna is that familiar in the South as Hannay.)
GREEN BRANCHES
In the year that followed the death of Mànus MacCodrum, James Achanna saw
nothing of his brother Gloom. He might have thought himself alone in the
world, of all his people, but for a letter that came to him out of the
west. True, he had never accepted the common opinion that his brothers
had both been drowned on that night when Anne Gillespie left Eilanmore
with Mànus. In the first place, he had nothing of that inner conviction
concerning the fate of Gloom which he had concerning that of Marcus; in
the next, had he not heard the sound of the _feadan_, which no one that
he knew played, except Gloom; and, for further token, was not the tune
that which he hated above all others--the Dance of the Dead--for who but
Gloom would be playing that, he hating it so, and the hour being late,
and no one else on Eilanmore? It was no sure thing that the dead had not
come back; but the more he thought of it the more Achanna believed that
his sixth brother was still alive. Of this, however, he said nothing to
anyone.
It was as a man set free that, at last, after long waiting and patient
trouble with the disposal of all that was left of the Achanna heritage,
he left the island. It was a grey memory for him. The bleak moorland
of it, the blight that had lain so long and so often upon the crops,
the rains that had swept the isle for grey days and grey weeks and grey
months, the sobbing of the sea by day and its dark moan by night, its dim
relinquishing sigh in the calm of dreary ebbs, its hollow baffling roar
when the storm-shadow swept up out of the sea, one and all oppressed him,
even in memory. He had never loved the island, even when it lay green and
fragrant in the green and white seas under white and blue skies, fresh
and sweet as an Eden of the sea. He had ever been lonely and weary, tired
of the mysterious shadow that lay upon his folk, caring little for any
of his brothers except the eldest--long since mysteriously gone out of
the ken of man--and almost hating Gloom, who had ever borne him a grudge
because of his beauty, and because of his likeness to and reverent heed
for Alison. Moreover, ever since he had come to love Katreen Macarthur,
the daughter of Donald Macarthur who lived in Sleat of Skye, he had been
eager to live near her; the more eager as he knew that Gloom loved the
girl also, and wished for success not only for his own sake, but so as to
put a slight upon his younger brother.
So, when at last he left the island, he sailed southward gladly. He was
leaving Eilanmore; he was bound to a new home in Skye, and perhaps he
was going to his long-delayed, long dreamed-of happiness. True, Katreen
was not pledged to him; he did not even know for sure if she loved him.
He thought, hoped, dreamed, almost believed that she did; but then there
was her cousin Ian, who had long wooed her, and to whom old Donald
Macarthur had given his blessing. Nevertheless, his heart would have been
lighter than it had been for long, but for two things. First, there was
the letter. Some weeks earlier he had received it, not recognising the
writing, because of the few letters he had ever seen, and, moreover,
as it was in a feigned hand. With difficulty he had deciphered the
manuscript, plain printed though it was. It ran thus:--
“Well, Sheumais, my brother, it is wondering if I am dead, you will
be. Maybe ay and maybe no. But I send you this writing to let you
see that I know all you do and think of. So you are going to leave
Eilanmore without an Achanna upon it? And you will be going to
Sleat in Skye? Well, let me be telling you this thing. _Do not go._
I see blood there. And there is this, too: neither you nor any man
shall take Katreen away from me. _You_ know that; and Ian Macarthur
knows it; and Katreen knows it: and that holds whether I am alive
or dead. I say to you: do not go. It will be better for you and for
all. Ian Macarthur is away in the north-sea with the whaler-captain
who came to us at Eilanmore, and will not be back for three months
yet. It will be better for him not to come back. But if he comes
back he will have to reckon with the man who says that Katreen
Macarthur is his. I would rather not have two men to speak to, and
one my brother. It does not matter to you where I am. I want no
money just now. But put aside my portion for me. Have it ready for
me against the day I call for it. I will not be patient that day:
so have it ready for me. In the place that I am I am content. You
will be saying: why is my brother away in a remote place (I will
say this to you: that it is not farther north than St Kilda nor
farther south than the Mull of Cantyre!), and for what reason? That
is between me and silence. But perhaps you think of Anne sometimes.
Do you know that she lies under the green grass? And of Mànus
MacCodrum? They say that he swam out into the sea and was drowned;
and they whisper of the seal-blood, though the minister is wroth
with them for that. He calls it a madness. Well, I was there at
that madness, and I played to it on my _feadan_. And now, Sheumais,
can you be thinking of what the tune was that I played?
“Your brother, who waits his own day,
“GLOOM.”
“Do not be forgetting this thing: _I would rather not be playing
the ‘Damhsà-na-mairbh.’_ It was an ill hour for Mànus when he
heard the Dàn-nan-Ròn; it was the song of his soul, that; and
yours is the Davsa-na-Mairv.”
This letter was ever in his mind: this, and what happened in the gloaming
when he sailed away for Skye in the herring-smack of two men who lived
at Armadale in Sleat. For, as the boat moved slowly out of the haven,
one of the men asked him if he was sure that no one was left upon the
island; for he thought he had seen a figure on the rocks, waving a black
scarf. Achanna shook his head, but just then his companion cried that at
that moment he had seen the same thing. So the smack was put about, and
when she was moving slow through the haven again, Achanna sculled ashore
in the little coggly punt. In vain he searched here and there, calling
loudly again and again. Both men could hardly have been mistaken, he
thought. If there were no human creature on the island, and if their eyes
had not played them false, who could it be? The wraith of Marcus, mayhap;
or might it be the old man himself (his father), risen to bid farewell to
his youngest son, or to warn him?
It was no use to wait longer; so, looking often behind him, he made his
way to the boat again, and rowed slowly out towards the smack.
_Jerk_--_jerk_--_jerk_ across the water came, low but only too loud for
him, the opening bars of the Damhsa-na-Mairbh. A horror came upon him,
and he drove the boat through the water so that the sea splashed over the
bows. When he came on deck he cried in a hoarse voice to the man next him
to put up the helm, and let the smack swing to the wind.
“There is no one there, Callum Campbell,” he whispered.
“And who is it that will be making that strange music?”
“What music?”
“Sure, it has stopped now, but I heard it clear, and so did Anndra
MacEwan. It was like the sound of a reed-pipe, and the tune was an eerie
one at that.”
“It was the Dance of the Dead.”
“And who will be playing that?” asked the man, with fear in his eyes.
“No living man.”
“No living man?”
“No. I’m thinking it will be one of my brothers who was drowned here, and
by the same token that it is Gloom, for he played upon the _feadan_; but
if not, then … then …”
The two men waited in breathless silence, each trembling with
superstitious fear; but at last the elder made a sign to Achanna to
finish.
“Then … it will be the Kelpie.”
“Is there … is there one of the … the cave-women here?”
“It is said; and you know of old that the Kelpie sings or plays a strange
tune to wile seamen to their death.”
At that moment, the fantastic jerking music came loud and clear across
the bay. There was a horrible suggestion in it, as if dead bodies were
moving along the ground with long jerks, and crying and laughing wild.
It was enough; the men, Campbell and MacEwan, would not now have waited
longer if Achanna had offered them all he had in the world. Nor were
they, or he, out of their panic haste till the smack stood well out at
sea, and not a sound could be heard from Eilanmore.
They stood watching, silent. Out of the dusky mass that lay in the
seaward way to the north came a red gleam. It was like an eye staring
after them with blood-red glances.
“What is that, Achanna?” asked one of the men at last.
“It looks as though a fire had been lit in the house up in the island.
The door and the window must be open. The fire must be fed with wood, for
no peats would give that flame; and there were none lit when I left. To
my knowing, there was no wood for burning except the wood of the shelves
and the bed.”
“And who would be doing that?”
“I know of that no more than you do, Callum Campbell.”
No more was said, and it was a relief to all when the last glimmer of the
light was absorbed in the darkness.
At the end of the voyage Campbell and MacEwan were well pleased to be
quit of their companion; not so much because he was moody and distraught,
as because they feared that a spell was upon him--a fate in the working
of which they might become involved. It needed no vow of the one to the
other for them to come to the conclusion that they would never land on
Eilanmore, or, if need be, only in broad daylight, and never alone.
* * * * *
The days went well for James Achanna, where he made his home at
Ranza-beag, on Ranza Water in the Sleat of Skye. The farm was small but
good, and he hoped that with help and care he would soon have the place
as good a farm as there was in all Skye.
Donald Macarthur did not let him see much of Katreen, but the old man was
no longer opposed to him. Sheumais must wait till Ian Macarthur came back
again, which might be any day now. For sure, James Achanna of Ranza-beag
was a very different person from the youngest of the Achanna-folk who
held by on lonely Eilanmore; moreover, the old man could not but think
with pleasure that it would be well to see Katreen able to walk over the
whole land of Ranza, from the cairn at the north of his own Ranza-Mòr to
the burn at the south of Ranza-beag, and know it for her own.
But Achanna was ready to wait. Even before he had the secret word of
Katreen he knew from her beautiful dark eyes that she loved him. As
the weeks went by they managed to meet often, and at last Katreen told
him that she loved him too, and would have none but him; but that they
must wait till Ian came back, because of the pledge given to him by her
father. They were days of joy for him. Through many a hot noon-tide
hour, through many a gloaming, he went as one in a dream. Whenever he
saw a birch swaying in the wind, or a wave leaping upon Loch Liath, that
was near his home, or passed a bush covered with wild roses, or saw the
moonbeams lying white on the boles of the pines, he thought of Katreen:
his fawn for grace, and so lithe and tall, with sun-brown face and wavy
dark mass of hair and shadowy eyes and rowan-red lips. It is said that
there is a god clothed in shadow who goes to and fro among the human
kind, putting silence between lovers with his waving hands, and breathing
a chill out of his cold breath, and leaving a gulf of deep water flowing
between them because of the passing of his feet. That shadow never
came their way. Their love grew as a flower fed by rains and warmed by
sunlight.
When midsummer came, and there was no sign of Ian Macarthur, it was
already too late. Katreen had been won.
During the summer months, it was the custom for Katreen and two of
the farm girls to go up Maol-Ranza, to reside at the shealing of
Cnoc-an-Fhraoch: and this because of the hill-pasture for the sheep.
Cnoc-an-Fhraoch is a round, boulder-studded hill covered with heather,
which has a precipitous corrie on each side, and in front slopes down to
Lochan Fraoch, a lochlet surrounded by dark woods. Behind the hill, or
great hillock rather, lay the shealing. At each week-end Katreen went
down to Ranza-Mòr, and on every Monday morning at sunrise returned to
her heather-girt eyrie. It was on one of these visits that she endured
a cruel shock. Her father told her that she must marry some one else
than Sheumais Achanna. He had heard words about him which made a union
impossible, and, indeed, he hoped that the man would leave Ranza-beag.
In the end, he admitted that what he had heard was to the effect that
Achanna was under a doom of some kind; that he was involved in a blood
feud; and, moreover, that he was fëy. The old man would not be explicit
as to the person from whom his information came, but hinted that he was a
stranger of rank, probably a laird of the isles. Besides this, there was
word of Ian Macarthur. He was at Thurso, in the far north, and would be
in Skye before long, and he--her father--had written to him that he might
wed Katreen as soon as was practicable.
“Do you see that lintie yonder, father?” was her response to this.
“Ay, lass; and what about the birdeen?”
“Well, when she mates with a hawk, so will I be mating with Ian
Macarthur, but not till then.”
With that she turned, and left the house, and went back to
Cnoc-an-Fhraoch. On the way she met Achanna.
It was that night that, for the first time, he swam across Lochan Fraoch
to meet Katreen.