"_Mithich domh triall gu tigh Pharais._"
(It is time for me to go up unto the House of Paradise.)
Muireadhach Albannach.
"_How many beautiful things have come to us from Pharais._"
"Bileag-na-Toscùil."
_To_
_E.W.R._
_Dear friend,--While you gratify me by your pleasure in this
inscription, you modestly deprecate the dedication to you of this story
of alien life--of that unfamiliar island-life so alien in all ways from
the life of cities, and, let me add, from that of the great mass of the
nation to which, in the communal sense, we both belong. But in the
Domhan-Tòir of friendship there are resting-places where all barriers of
race, training, and circumstance fall away in dust. At one of these
places of peace we met, a long while ago, and found that we loved the
same things, and in the same way. You have been in the charmed West
yourself; have seen the gloom and shine of the mountains that throw
their shadow on the sea: have heard the wave whisper along that haunted
shore which none loves save with passion, and none, loving, can bear to
be long parted from. You, unlike so many who delight only in the magic
of sunshine and cloud, love this dear land when the mists drive across
the hillsides, and the brown torrents are in spate, and the rain and the
black wind make a gloom upon every loch, and fill with the dusk of storm
every strath, and glen, and corrie. Not otherwise can one love it
aright_: "Tir nam Beann s'nan gleann' s'nan ghaisgach," _as one of our
ancient poets calls it--"The land of hills, and glens, and heroes." You,
too, like Deirdre of old, have looked back on "Alba," and, finding it
passing fair and dear, have, with the Celtic Helen, said in your
heart_--
Inmain tir in tir ud thoir,
Alba cona lingantaibh! . . .
_'Belovéd is that eastern land,
Alba of the lochs._'
_In the mythology of the Gael are three forgotten deities, children of
Delbaith-Dana. These are Seithoir, Teithoir, and Keithoir. One dwells
throughout the sea, and beneath the soles of the feet of another are the
highest clouds; and these two may be held sacred for the beauty they
weave for the joy of eye and ear. But now that, as surely none may
gainsay, Keithoir is blind and weary, let us worship at his fane rather
than give all our homage to the others. For Keithoir is the _god of
the earth; dark-eyed, shadowy brother of Pan; and his fane is among the
lonely glens and mountains and lonelier isles of_ "Alba cona
lingantaibh." _It is because you and I are of the children of Keithoir
that I wished to grace my book with your name._
_The most nature-wrought of the English poets hoped he was not too late
in transmuting into his own verse something of the beautiful mythology
of Greece. But while Keats spun from the inexhaustible loom of genius,
and I am but an obscure chronicler of obscure things, is it too
presumptuous of me to hope that here, and mayhap elsewhere, I, the
latest comer among older and worthier celebrants and co-enthusiasts,
likewise may do something, howsoever little, to win a further measure of
heed for, and more intimate sympathy with, that old charm and stellar
beauty of Celtic thought and imagination, now, alas, like so many other
lovely things, growing more and more remote, discoverable seldom in
books, and elusive amid the sayings and oral legends and fragmentary
songs of a passing race?_
* * * * *
_A passing race: and yet, mayhap not so. Change is inevitable; and even
if we could hear the wind blowing along Magh Mell--the Plain of
Honey--we might list to a new note, bitter-sweet: and, doubtless, the
waves falling over the green roof of Tir-na-Thonn' murmur drowsily of a
shifting of the veils of circumstance, which Keithoir weaves blindly in
his dark place. But what was, surely is; and what is, surely may yet be.
The form changes; the essential abides. As the saying goes among the
isle-folk: The shadow fleets beneath the cloud driven by the wind, and
the cloud falls in rain or is sucked of the sun, but the wind sways this
way and that for ever. It may well be that the Celtic Dream is not
doomed to become a memory merely. Were it so, there would be less joy in
all Springs to come, less hope in all brown Autumns; and the cold of a
deathlier chill in all Winters still dreaming by the Pole. For the
Celtic joy in the life of Nature--the Celtic vision--is a thing apart:
it is a passion; a visionary rapture. There is none like it among the
peoples of our race._
_Meanwhile, there are a few remote spots, as yet inviolate. Here, Anima
Celtica still lives and breathes and hath her being. She dreams: but if
she awake, it may not necessarily be to a deepening twilight, or to a
forlorn passage to Tir Tairngire--that Land of Promise whose borders
shine with the loveliness of all forfeited, or lost, or banished dreams
and realities of Beauty. It may be that she will arise to a wider
sway, over a disfrontiered realm. Blue are the hills that are far from
us. Dear saying of the Gael, whose soul as well as whose heart speaks
therein. Far hills recede, recede! Dim veils of blue, woven from within
and without, haunt us, allure us, always, always!_
* * * * *
_But now, before I send you my last word of greeting, let me add (rather
for other readers than for you, who already know of them) a word
concerning the Gaelic runes interpolated in_ Pharais.[1]
[1] _A slightly anglicised lection of the Gaelic word_ Pàras =
Paradise, _Heaven_. "Pharais," _properly, is the genitive and
dative case of Pàras, as in the line from Muireadhach Albannach,
quoted after the title page_. "Mithich domh triall gu tigh
Pharais"--"_It is time for me to go up unto the House of
Paradise_."
_The_ "Urnuigh Smalaidh an Teine" (_p. 42_) _and_ "Au t Altachadh Leapa"
(_p. 43_)--_respectively a prayer to be said at covering up the
peat-fire at bed-time and a Rest-blessing--are relics of ancient Celtic
folklore which were sent to the Rev. Dr. Alexander Stewart, of "Nether
Lochaber" fame, by Mr. A. A. Carmichael, of South Uist, who took them
down from the recitation of a man living at Iocar of Uist. From the same
Hebridean source came the "Rann Buacbailleac," or rune to be said over
cattle when led to pasture at morn, introduced at p. 49. The English
versions, by Dr. Stewart, appeared first in_ "The Inverness Courier,"
_over twenty years ago. There are several versions current of the
authentic incident of the innocent old woman held to be a witch, and of
her prayer. I weave into my story the episode as I heard it many years
ago, though with the rune rescued from oblivion by Dr. Stewart, rather
than with the longer and commonly corrupted version still to be heard by
the croft-fire in many localities, all "the far cry" from the Ord of
Sutherland to the Rhinns of Islay. The_ "Laoidh Mhnathan"--_the Chant of
Women, at p. 100--is not ancient in the actual form here given, which is
from an unpublished volume of_ "Oràin' Spioradail."
_The sweetest-voiced of the younger Irish singers of to-day has spoken
of the Celtic Twilight. A twilight it is; but, if night follow gloaming,
so also does dawn succeed night. Meanwhile, twilight voices are sweet,
if faint and far, and linger lovingly in the ear._
_There is another Pàras than that seen of Alastair of Innisròn--the
Tir-Nan-Oigh of friendship. Therein we both have seen beautiful visions
and dreamed dreams. Take, then, out of my heart, this book of vision and
dream._
_FIONA MACLEOD._
"_O bileag-geal,
O bileag-na-Toscùil, bileag Pharais,
O tha e boidheach!
Tha e boidheach!_"