It was in the old forgotten days when all the western coast of Spain
was sprinkled with lonely hermitages among the rocks, and with holy
houses and towers of prayer; and this west coast was thought to be the
last and outermost edge of all land, for beyond there lay nothing but
the vast ocean stream and the sunset. There, in the west of the world,
on the brink of the sea and the lights of the day that is done, lived
the men of God, looking for ever towards the east for the coming of the
Lord. Even the dead were laid in the place of their resurrection with
their feet pointing to the morning, so that when they should arise
their faces would be turned towards His coming. Thus it came to pass
that the keen white wind out of the east was named the wind of the dead
men's feet.
Now in one or these holy houses lived the monk Bresal of the Songs, who
had followed Sedulius the Bishop into Spain.
Bresal had been sent thither to teach the brethren the music of the
choirs of the Isle of the Gael and to train the novices in chant and
psalmody, for of all singers the sweetest was he, and he could play on
every instrument of wind or string, and was skilled in all the modes of
minstrelsy. Thereto he knew by heart numberless hymns and songs and
poems, and God had given him the gift to make songs and hymns, and
beautiful airs for the singing of them. And for these things, so sweet
and gentle was the nature of the man, he was greatly beloved
whithersoever he fared.
A happy and holy life had he lived, but now he was growing old; and as
he looked from the convent on the cliffs far over the western waters,
he thought daily more and more of Erinn, and a great longing grew upon
him to see once more that green isle in which he had been born. And
when he saw, far below, the ships of the sea-farers dragging slowly
away into the north in the breezy sunshine or in the blue twilight, his
eyes became dim with the thought that perchance these wind-reddened
mariners might be steering for the shores of his longing.
The Prior of the convent noticed his sadness and questioned him of the
cause, and when Bresal told him, "Why should you go?" he asked. "Do
you not love us any longer?"
"Dearly do I love you, father," replied Bresal, "and dearly this house,
and every rock and tree and flower; but no son of the Isle of the Gael
forgets the little mother-lap of earth whereon he was nursed, or the
smell of the burning peat, or the song of the robin, or the drone of
the big mottled wild bee, or the cry of the wild geese when the winter
is nigh. Even Columba the holy pined for the lack of these things.
This is what he says in one of the songs which he has left us:
_There's an eye of grey_
_Looks back to Erinn far away;_
_Big tears wet that eye of grey_
_Seeking Erinn far away."_
Now the Prior loved Bresal as Jonathan loved David; and though it
grieved him to part with him, he resolved that if it could be compassed
Bresal should go back to his own country. "But you must never forget
us, and when you are happy, far away from us, you must think of us and
give us your heart in prayer."
"Never shall I forget you, father," the Singer replied. "Indeed, it
will not be a strange thing if I shall long for you then even as I am
longing for my home now; for in truth, next to my home, most do I love
the brethren of this house, and the very house itself, and the hills
and the sea and the dying lights of the evening. But I know that it
will not be permitted me ever to return. The place of my birth will be
the place of my resurrection."
The Prior smiled, and laid his hand gently on the monk's shoulder: "O
Bresal, if it be within my power you shall have your will."
So he sent messengers to Sedulius the Bishop; and Sedulius, who also
had the Irish heart with its tears of longing, consented; and not many
days after the swallows and martins had gone flashing by into the
north, Bresal of the Songs was free to follow as speedily as he might.
Long was the way and weary the pilgrimage, but at last he reached the
beloved green Isle of the Gael, and fared into the south-west--and this
is the land in which it is told that Patrick the Saint celebrated Mass
on every seventh ridge he passed over. He came at sunset on the last
day of the week to the place of bells and cells among the rocks of the
coast of Kerry. In that blessed spot there is ever a service of Angels
ascending and descending. And when he saw once more the turf dyke and
the wattled cells and the rude stone church of the brotherhood where he
had been a son of reading in his boyhood, and the land all quiet with
the labour of the week done, and the woods red with the last light of
the finished day, the tears ran down his face, and he fell on the earth
and kissed it for joy at his return. It was a glad thing for him to be
there once more; to recognise each spot he had loved, to look on the
old stones and trees, the hills and sparkling sea, the rocky isle and
the curraghs of the fisher-folk; to smell the reek of the peat curling
up blue in the sweet air; for all these things had haunted him in
dreams when he was in a distant land.
Now when the first hunger of longing had been appeased, and the year
wore round, and the swallows gathered in the autumn, and every bush and
tree was crowded with them while they waited restlessly for a moonlight
night and a fair wind to take their flight over sea, Bresal began to
think tenderly of the home on the Spanish cliffs overhanging the brink
of the sunset.
Then in the brown days of the autumn rains; and again in the keen
November when the leaves were falling in sudden showers--but the
highest leaves clung the longest--and puffs of whirling wind set the
fallen leaves flying, and these were full of sharp sounds and pattering
voices; and sixes of sparrows went flying with the leaves so that one
could not well say which were leaves and which were birds; and yet
again through the bitter time when the eaves were hung with icicles and
the peaks of the blue slieves were white with snow, and the low hills
and fields were hoary--the memory of the Prior and of the beloved house
prevailed with him and he felt the dull ache of separation.
[Illustration: _And again in the keen November_]
As the days passed by his trouble grew the greater, for he began to
fear that his love of the creature was attaching him too closely to the
earth and to the things of this fleeting life of our exile. In vain he
fasted and prayed and strove to subdue his affections; the human heart
within him would not suffer him to rest.
Now it happened on a day when the year had turned, and a soft wind was
tossing the little new leaves and the shadows of the leaves and the new
grass and the shadows of the grass, Bresal was sitting on a rock in the
sun on the hillside.
Suddenly there flashed by him, in a long swift joyous swing of flight,
two beautiful birds with long wings and forked tails and a sheen of red
and green. It was the swallows that had returned.
For a moment he felt an ascension of the heart, and then he recollected
that nearly a year had elapsed since he had seen the face of his friend
the Prior for the last time in this world. And he wondered to himself
how they all fared, whether any one had died, what this one or that was
now doing, whether they still spoke at times of him, but chiefly he
thought of the Prior, and he prayed for him with a great love. And
thinking thus as he sat on the rock, Bresal seemed to see once more the
dear house in Spain and the cliffs overlooking the vast ocean stream,
and it appeared to him as though he were once again in a favourite nook
among the rocks beside the priory.
In that nook a thread of water trickled down into a hollow stone and
made a little pool, and around the pool grew an ice-plant with thick
round green leaves set close and notched on the edge, and a thin russet
stalk, and little stars of white flowers sprinkled with red. And hard
by the pool stood a small rounded evergreen tree from which he had
often gathered the orange-scarlet berries. At the sight of these
simple and familiar things the tears ran down Bresal's cheeks, half for
joy and half for sorrow.
Now at this selfsame moment the Prior was taking the air and saying his
office near that very spot, and when he had closed his breviary, he
remembered his friend in Erinn far away, and murmured, "How is it,
Lord, with Bresal my brother? Have him, I pray Thee, ever in Thy holy
keeping."
As he spoke the gift of heavenly vision descended on the Prior, and he
saw where Bresal sat on a rock in the sun gazing at the evergreen tree
and the ice-plant about the little pool, and he perceived that Bresal
fancied he was looking at these things.
A great tenderness for Bresal filled the Prior's heart, and he prayed:
"Lord, if it be Thy holy will, let Bresal my brother have near him
these things of which he is dreaming, as a remembrance of what his soul
loveth." Then, turning to the tree and the plant and the pool, he
blessed them and said: "O little tree and starry plant and cool well
and transparent fern, and whatsoever else Bresal now sees, arise in the
name of the Lord of the four winds and of earth and water and fire,
arise and go and make real the dream that he is dreaming."
As he spoke the trickling water and the tree and the saxifrage, and
with them parcels of soil and rock, and with the pool the blue light of
the sky reflected in it, rose like a cloud and vanished, and the Prior
beheld them no more.
At last Bresal brushed away his tears, blaming his weakness and his
enslavement to earthly affections, but the things he had seen in his
happy day-dream did not vanish. To his great amazement, there at his
feet were the little pool and the ice-plant, and hard by grew the
evergreen tree. He rose with a cry of joy, "O Father Prior, 'tis thy
prayer hath done this!"
And care was lifted from him, for now he knew that in his human love he
had in nowise sinned against the love of God, but contrariwise the love
of his friend had drawn him closer to the love of his Maker. During
all the days of the years of his exile this little parcel of Spain was
a solace and a strength to him.
Many a hundred years has gone by since this happened, but still if you
travel in that land you may see the ice-plant and the evergreen tree.
And the name of the evergreen is the Strawberry Tree. The ice-plant,
which is also called a saxifrage, may now be seen in many a garden to
which it has been brought from the Kerry mountains, and it is known as
London Pride. Botanists who do not know the story of Bresal of the
Songs have been puzzled to explain how a Spanish tree and a Spanish
flower happen to grow in one little nook of Erinn.