Chapter VI: Front Matter (6)

The third hour they talked about the beasts of the earth and the fowls of the air.

At the last Ardan said: "The ancient wisdom hath it that these are the souls of men and women that have been, or are to be." Whereat Colum answered: "The new wisdom, that is old as eternity, declareth that God created all things in love. Therefore are we at one, O Ardan, though we sail to the Isle of Truth from the west and the east. Let there be peace between us." "Peace," said Ardan.

That eve, Ardan of the Picts sat with the monks of Iona.

Colum blessed him and said a saying. Cathal of the Songs sang a hymn of beauty. Ardan rose, and put the wine of guests to his lips, and chanted this rann:

O Colum and monks of Christ,
It is peace we are having this night:
Sure, peace is a good thing,
And I am glad with the gladness.

We worship one God,
Though ye call him Dia--
And I say not, O De!
But cry _Bea'uil Bel_!

For it is one faith for man,
And one for the living world,
And no man is wiser than another--
And none knoweth much.

None knoweth a better thing than this:
The Sword, Love, Song, Honour, Sleep.
None knoweth a surer thing than this:
Birth, Sorrow, Pain, Weariness, Death.

Sure, peace is a good thing;
Let us be glad of peace:
We are not men of the Sword,
But of the Rune and the Wisdom.

I have learned a truth of Colum,
And he hath learned of me:
All ye on the morrow shall see
A wonder of the wonders.

Ardan would say no more after that, though all besought him. Many pondered long that night. Cathal made a song of mystery. Colum brooded through the dark; but before dawn he fell asleep upon the fern that strewed his cell. At dawn, with waking eyes, and weary, he saw his Sleep in a vision.

It stood grey and wan beside him.

"What art thou, O Spirit?" he said.

"I am thy Sleep, Colum."

"And is it peace?"

"It is peace."

"What wouldst thou?"

"I have wisdom. Thy mind and thy soul were closed. I could not give what I brought. I brought wisdom."

"Give it."

"Behold!"

And Colum, sitting upon the strewed fern that was his bed, rubbed his eyes that were heavy with weariness and fasting and long prayer. He could not see his Sleep now. It was gone as smoke that is licked up by the wind....

For three days thereafter Colum fasted, save for a handful of meal at dawn, a piece of rye-bread at noon, and a mouthful of dulse and spring-water at sun-down. On the night of the third day, Oran and Keir came to him in his cell. Colum was on his knees lost in prayer. No sound was there, save the faint whispered muttering of his lips and on the plastered wall the weary buzzing of a fly.

"Holy One!" said Oran in a low voice, soft with pity and awe; "Holy One!"

But Colum took no notice. His lips still moved, and the tangled hairs below his nether lip shivered with his failing breath.

"Father!" said Keir, tender as a woman; "Father!"

Colum did not turn his eyes from the wall. The fly droned his drowsy hum upon the rough plaster. It crawled wearily for a space, then stopped. The slow hot drone filled the cell.

"Father," said Oran, "it is the will of the brethren that thou shouldst break thy fast. Thou art old, and God has thy glory. Give us peace."

"Father," urged Keir, seeing that Colum kneeled unnoticingly, his lips still moving above his grey beard, with the white hair of him falling about his head like a snowdrift slipping from a boulder. "Father, be pitiful! We hunger and thirst for thy presence. We can fast no longer, yet we have no heart to break our fast if thou art not with us. Come, holy one, and be of our company, and eat of the good broiled fish that awaiteth us. We perish for the benediction of thine eyes."

Then it was that Colum rose, and walked slowly towards the wall.

"Little black beast," he said to the fly that droned its drowsy hum and moved not at all; "little black beast, sure it is well I am knowing what you are. You are thinking you are going to get my blessing, you that have come out of hell for the soul of me!"

At that the fly flew heavily from the wall, and slowly circled round and round the head of Colum the White.

"What think ye of that, brother Oran, brother Keir?" he asked in a low voice, hoarse because of his long fast and the weariness that was upon him.

"It is a fiend," said Oran.

"It is an angel," said Keir.

Thereupon the fly settled upon the wall again, and again droned his drowsy hot hum.

"Little black beast," said Colum, with the frown coming down into his eyes, "is it for peace you are here, or for sin? Answer, I conjure you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost!"

"_An ainn an Athar, 's an Mhic, 's an Spioraid Naoimh_," repeated Oran below his breath.

"_An ainn an Athar, 's an Mhic, 's an Spioraid Naoimh_," repeated Keir below his breath.

Then the fly that was upon the wall flew up to the roof and circled to and fro. And it sang a beautiful song, and its song was this:

Praise be to God, and a blessing too at that, and a blessing!
For Colum the White, Colum the Dove, hath worshipped;
Yea, he hath worshipped and made of a desert a garden,
And out of the dung of men's souls have made a sweet savour of
burning.

A savour of burning, most sweet, a fire for the altar,
This he hath made in the desert; the hell-saved all gladden.
Sure he hath put his benison, too, on milch-cow and bullock,
On the fowls of the air, and the man-eyed seals, and the otter.

But high in His Dun in the great blue mainland of heaven,
God the All-Father broodeth, where the harpers are harping His
glory:
There where He sitteth, where a river of ale poureth ever,
His great sword broken, His spear in the dust, He broodeth.

And this is the thought that moves in his brain, as a cloud filled
with thunder
Moves through the vast hollow sky filled with the dust of the
stars--
"What boots it the glory of Colum, when he maketh a Sabbath to bless
me,
And hath no thought of my sons in the deeps of the air and the sea?"

And with that the fly passed from their vision. In the cell was a most wondrous sweet song, like the sound of far-off pipes over water.

Oran said in a low voice of awe, "O God, our God!"

Keir whispered, white with fear, "O God, my God!"

But Colum rose, and took a scourge from where it hung on the wall. "It shall be for peace, Oran," he said, with a grim smile flitting like a bird above the nest of his grey beard; "it shall be for peace, Keir!"

And with that he laid the scourge heavily upon the bent backs of Keir and Oran, nor stayed his hand, nor let his three days' fast weaken the deep piety that was in the might of his arm, and because of the glory of God.

Then, when he was weary, peace came into his heart, and he sighed "_Amen_!"

"Amen!" said Oran the monk.

"Amen!" said Keir the monk.

"And this thing has been done," said Colum, "because of your evil wish and the brethren, that I should break my fast, and eat of fish, till God will it. And lo, I have learned a mystery. Ye shall all witness to it on the morrow, which is the Sabbath."

That night the monks wondered much. Only Oran and Keir cursed the fishes in the deeps of the sea and the flies in the deeps of the air.

On the morrow, when the sun was yellow on the brown seaweed, and there was peace on the isle and upon the waters, Colum and the brotherhood went slowly towards the sea.

At the meadows that are close to the sea, the saint stood still. All bowed their heads.

"O winged things of the air," cried Colum, "draw near!"

With that the air was full of the hum of innumerous flies, midges, bees, wasps, moths, and all winged insects. These settled upon the monks, who moved not, but praised God in silence.

"Glory and praise to God," cried Colum, "behold the Sabbath of the children of God that inhabit the deeps of the air! Blessing and peace be upon them."

"Peace! Peace!" cried the monks, with one voice.

"In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost!" cried Colum the White, glad because of the glory to God.

"_An ainn an Athar, 's an Mhic, 's an Spioraid Naoimh_," cried the monks, bowing reverently, and Oran and Keir deepest of all, because they saw the fly that was of Colum's cell leading the whole host, as though it were its captain, and singing to them a marvellous sweet song.

Oran and Keir testified to this thing, and all were full of awe and wonder, and Colum praised God.

Then the saints and the brotherhood moved onward and went upon the rocks. When all stood ankle-deep in the seaweed that was swaying in the tide, Colum cried:

"O finny creatures of the deep, draw near!"

And with that the whole sea shimmered as with silver and gold. All the fishes of the sea, and the great eels, and the lobsters and the crabs, came in a swift and terrible procession. Great was the glory.

Then Colum cried, "O fishes of the deep, who is your king?" Whereupon the herring, the mackerel, and the dogfish swam forward, and each claimed to be king. But the echo that ran from wave to wave said, _The Herring is King_!

Then Colum said to the mackerel, "Sing the song that is upon you."

And the mackerel sang the song of the wild rovers of the sea, and the lust of pleasure.

Then Colum said, "But for God's mercy, I would curse you, O false fish."

Then he spoke likewise to the dogfish, and the dogfish sang of slaughter and the chase, and the joy of blood.

And Colum said, "Hell shall be your portion."

Then there was peace. And the herring said:

"In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost."

Whereat all that mighty multitude, before they sank into the deep, waved their fins and their claws, each after its kind, and repeated as with one voice:

"_An ain ann Athar, 's an Mhic, 's an Spioraid Naoimh!_"

And the glory that was upon the Sound of Iona was as though God trailed a starry net upon the waters, with a shining star in every little hollow, and a flowing moon of gold on every wave.

Then Colum the White put out both his arms, and blessed the children of God that are in the deeps of the sea and that are in the deeps of the air.

That is how Sabbath came upon all living things upon Ioua that is called Iona, and within the air above Ioua, and within the sea that is around Ioua.

And the glory is Colum's.

To illustrate the history of the island I select the following episode from _Barbaric Tales_. It deals with The Flight of the Culdees. The name culdee is somewhat loosely used both by mediaeval and modern writers, for it does not appear to have been given to the Brotherhood of the Columban Church till two hundred years after Columba's death. The word may be taken to mean the Cleric of God; perhaps, later, it was the equivalent of anchorite. This episode is, in date, about A.D. 800 or soon after.

On the wane of the moon, on the day following the ruin of Bail'-tiorail, sails were seen far east of Stromness.

Olaus the White called his men together. The boats coming before the wind were doubtless his own galleys which he had lost when the south-gale had blown them against Skye; but no man can know when and how the gods may smile grimly, and let the swords that whirl be broken, or the spears that are flat become a hedge of death.

An hour later, a startled word went from viking to viking. The galleys in the offing were the fleet of Sweno the Hammerer. Why had he come so far southward, and why were oars so swift and the stained sails distended before the wind? They were soon to know.

Sweno himself was the first to land. A great man he was, broad and burly, with a sword-slash across his face that brought his brows in a perpetual frown above his savage blood-shot eyes.

In few words he told how he had met a galley, with only half its crew, and of these many who were wounded. It was the last of the fleet of Haco the Laugher. A fleet of fifteen war-birlinns had set out from the Long Island, and had given battle. Haco had gone into the strife, laughing loud as was his wont, and he and all his men had the berserk rage, and fought with joy and foam at the mouth. Never had the Sword sung a sweeter song.

"Well," said Olaus the White grimly, "well, how did the Raven fly?"

"When Haco laughed for the last time, his sword waving out of the death-tide where he sank, there was only one galley left. No more than nine vikings lived thereafter to tell the tale. These nine we took out of their boat, which was below waves soon. Haco and his men are all fighting the sea-shadows by now."

A loud snarling went from man to man. This became a cry of rage. Then savage shouts filled the air. Swords were lifted up against the sky; and the fierce glitter of blue eyes and the bristling of tawny beards were fair to see, thought the captive women, though their hearts beat in their breasts like eaglets behind the bars of a cage.

Sweno the Hammerer frowned a deep frown when he heard that Olaus was there with only the _Svart-Alf_ out of the galleys which had gone the southward way.

"If the islanders come upon us now with their birlinns we shall have to make a running fight," he said.

Olaus laughed.

"Ay, but the running shall be after the birlinns, Sweno."

"I hear there are fifty and nine men of these Culdees yonder under the sword-priest, Maoliosa?"

"It is a true word. But to-night, after the moon is up, there shall be none."

At that, all who heard laughed, and were less heavy in their hearts because of the slaying and drowning of Haco the Laugher and all his crew.

"Where is the woman Brenda that you took?" Olaus asked, as he stared at Sweno's boat and saw no woman there.

"She is in the sea."

Olaus the White looked. It was his eyes that asked.

"I flung her into the sea because she laughed when she heard of how the birlinns that were under Somhairle the Renegade drove in upon our ships, and how Haco laughed no more, and the sea was red with viking blood."

"She was a woman, Sweno--and none more fair in the isles, after Morna that is mine."

"Woman or no woman, I flung her into the sea. The Gael call us Gall: then I will let no Gael laugh at the Gall. It is enough. She is drowned. There are always women: one here, one there--it is but a wave blown this way or that."

At this moment a viking came running across the ruined town with tidings. Maoliosa and his culdees were crowding into a great birlinn. Perhaps they were coming to give battle: perhaps they were for sailing away from that place.

Olaus and Sweno stared across the fjord. At first they knew not what to do. If Maoliosa thought of battle he would hardly choose that hour and place. Or was it that he knew the Gael were coming in force, and that the vikings were caught in a trap?

At last it was clear. Sweno gave a great laugh.

"By the blood of Odin," he cried, "they come to sue for peace!"

Filled with white-robed culdees, the birlinn drew slowly across the loch. A tall, old man stood at the prow, with streaming hair and beard, white as sea-foam. In his right hand he grasped a great Cross, whereon Christ was crucified.

The vikings drew close to one another.

"Hail them in their own tongue, Sweno," said Olaus.

The Hammerer moved to the water-edge, as the birlinn stopped, a short arrow-flight away.

"Ho, there, priests of the Christ-faith!"

"What would you, viking?" It was Maoliosa himself that spoke.

"Why do you come here among us, you that are Maoliosa?"

"To win you and yours to God, Pagan."

"Is it madness that is upon you, old man? We have swords and spears here, if we lack hymns and prayers."

All this time Olaus kept a wary watch inland and seaward, for he feared that Maoliosa came because of an ambush.

Truly the old monk was mad. He had told his culdees that God would prevail, and that the pagans would melt away before the Cross. The ebb-tide was running swift. Even while Sweno spoke, the birlinn touched a low sea-hidden ledge of rock. A cry of consternation went up from the white-robes. Loud laughter came from the vikings.

"Arrows!" cried Olaus.

With that threescore men took their bows. A hail of death-shafts fell. Many pierced the water, but some pierced the necks and hearts of the culdees.

Maoliosa himself, stood in death transfixed to the mast. With a scream the monks swept their oars backward. Then they leaped to their feet, and changed their place, and rowed for life.

The summer-sailors sprang into their galley. Sweno the Hammerer was at the bow. The foam curled and hissed. The birlinn of the culdees grided upon the opposite shore at the moment when Sweno brought down his battle-axe upon the monk who steered. The man was cleft to the shoulder. Sweno swayed with the blow, stumbled, and fell headlong into the sea. A culdee thrust at him with an oar, and pinned him among the sea-tangle. Thus died Sweno the Hammerer.

Like a flock of sheep the white-robes leaped upon the shore. Yet Olaus was quicker than they. With a score of vikings he raced to the Church of the Cells, and gained the sanctuary. The monks uttered a cry of despair, and, turning, fled across the sands. Olaus counted them. There were now forty in all.

"Let forty men follow," he cried.

The monks fled this way and that. Olaus, and those who watched, laughed to see how they stumbled, because of their robes. One by one fell, sword-cleft or spear-thrust. The sand-dunes were red.

Soon there were fewer than a score--then twelve only--ten!

"Bring them back!" Olaus shouted.

When the ten fugitives were captured and brought back, Olaus took the crucifix that Maoliosa had raised, and held it before each in turn.

"Smite!" he said to the first monk. But the man would not.

"Smite!" he said to the second; but he would not. And so it was to the tenth.

"Good!" said Olaus the White; "they shall witness to their God."

With that he bade his vikings break up the birlinn, and drive the planks into the ground and shore them up with logs. When this was done he crucified each culdee. With nails and with ropes he did unto each what their God had suffered. Then all were left there by the water-side.

That night, when Olaus the White and the laughing Morna left the great bonfire where the vikings sang and drank horn after horn of strong ale, they stood and looked across the strait. In the moonlight, upon the dim verge of the island shore, they could see ten crosses. On each was a motionless white splatch.

Once more, for an instance of the grafting of Christian thought and imagery on pagan thought and imagery, I take a few pages of the introductory part to the story of "The Woman with the Net," in a later volume.[6] They tell of a young monk who, inspired by Colum's holy example, went out of Iona as a missionary to the Pictish heathen of the north.

When Artan had kissed the brow of every white-robed brother on Iona, and had been thrice kissed by the aged Colum, his heart was filled with gladness.

It was late summer, and in the afternoon-light peace lay on the green waters of the Sound, on the green grass of the dunes, on the domed wicker-woven cells of the culdees over whom the holy Colum ruled, and on the little rock-strewn hill which rose above where stood Colum's wattled church of sun-baked mud. The abbot walked slowly by the side of the young man. Colum was tall, with hair long and heavy but white as the canna, and with a beard that hung low on his breast, grey as the moss on old firs. His blue eyes were tender. The youth--for though he was a grown man he seemed a youth beside Colum--had beauty. He was tall and comely, with yellow curling hair, and dark-blue eyes, and a skin so white that it troubled some of the monks who dreamed old dreams and washed them away in tears and scourgings.

"You have the bitter fever of youth upon you, Artan," said Colum, as they crossed the dunes beyond Dun-I; "but you have no fear, and you will be a flame among these Pictish idolaters, and you will be a lamp to show them the way."

"And when I come again, there will be clappings of hands, and hymns, and many rejoicings?"

"I do not think you will come again," said Colum. "The wild people of these northlands will burn you, or crucify you, or put you upon the crahslat, or give you thirst and hunger till you die. It will be a great joy for you to die like that, Artan, my son?"

"Ay, a great joy," answered the young monk, but with his eyes dreaming away from his words.

Silence was between them as they neared the cove where a large coracle lay, with three men in it.

"Will God be coming to Iona when I am away?" asked Artan.

Colum stared at him.

"Is it likely that God would come here in a coracle?" he asked, with scornful eyes.

The young man looked abashed. For sure, God would not come in a coracle, just as he himself might come. He knew by that how Colum had reproved him. He would come in a cloud of fire, and would be seen from far and near. Artan wondered if the place he was going to was too far north for him to see that greatness; but he feared to ask.

"Give me a new name," he asked; "give me a new name, my father."

"What name will you have?"

"Servant of Mary."

"So be it, Artan Gille-Mhoire."

With that Colum kissed him and bade farewell, and Artan sat down in the coracle, and covered his head with his mantle, and wept and prayed.

The last word he heard was, _Peace_!

"That is a good word, and a good thing," he said to himself; "and because I am the Servant of Mary, and the Brother of Jesu the Son, I will take peace to the _Cruitne_, who know nothing of that blessing of the blessings."

When he unfolded his mantle, he saw that the coracle was already far from Iona. The south wind blew, and the tides swept northward, and the boat moved swiftly across the water. The sea was ashine with froth and small waves leaping like lambs.

In the boat were Thorkeld, a helot of Iona, and two dark wild-eyed men of the north. They were Picts, but could speak the tongue of the Gael. Myrdu, the Pictish king of Skye, had sent them to Iona, to bring back from Colum a culdee who could show wonders.

"And tell the chief Druid of the Godmen," Myrdu had said, "that if his culdee does not show me good wonders, and so make me believe in his two gods and the woman, I will put an ash-shaft through his body from the hips and out at his mouth, and send him back on the north tide to the Isle of the White-Robes." The sun was already among the outer isles when the coracle passed near the Isle of Columns. A great noise was in the air: the noise of the waves in the caverns, and the noise of the tide, like sea-wolves growling, and like bulls bellowing in a narrow pass of the hills.

A sudden current caught the boat, and it began to drift towards great reefs white with ceaseless torn streams.

Thorkeld leaned from the helm, and shouted to the two Picts. They did not stir, but sat staring, idle with fear.

Artan knew now that it was as Colum had said. God would give him glory soon.

So he took the little clarsach he had for hymns, for he was the best harper on Iona, and struck the strings, and sang. But the Latin words tangled in his throat, and he knew too that the men in the boat would not understand what he sang; also that the older gods still came far south, and in the caves of the Isle of Columns were demons. There was only one tongue common to all; and since God has wisdom beyond that of Colum himself, He would know the song in Gaelic as well as though sung in Latin.

So Artan let the wind take his broken hymn, and he made a song of his own, and sang:

O Heavenly Mary, Queen of the Elements,
And you, Brigit the fair with the little harp,
And all the saints, and all the old gods
(And it is not one of them I'd be disowning),
Speak to the Father, that he may save us from drowning.

Then seeing that the boat drifted closer, he sang again:

Save us from the rocks and the sea, Queen of Heaven!
And remember that I am a Culdee of Iona,
And that Colum has sent me to the _Cruitne_
To sing them the song of peace lest they be damned for ever!

Thorkeld laughed at that.

"Can the woman put swimming upon you?" he said roughly. "I would rather have the good fin of a great fish now than any woman in the skies."

"You will burn in hell for that," said Artan, the holy zeal warm at his heart.

But Thorkeld answered nothing. His hand was on the helm, his eyes on the foaming rocks. Besides, what had he to do with the culdee's hell or heaven? When he died, he, who was a man of Lochlann, would go to his own place.

One of the dark men stood, holding the mast. His eyes shone. Thick words swung from his lips like seaweed thrown out of a hollow by an ebbing wave.

The coracle swerved, and the four men were wet with the heavy spray.

Thorkeld put his oar in the water, and the swaying craft righted.

"Glory to God," said Artan.

"There is no glory to your god in this," said Thorkeld scornfully. "Did you not hear what Necta sang? He sang to the woman in there that drags men into the caves, and throws their bones on the next tide. He put an incantation upon her, and she shrank, and the boat slid away from the rocks."

"That is a true thing," thought Artan. He wondered if it was because he had not sung his hymn in the holy Latin.

When the last flame died out of the west, and the stars came like sheep gathering at the call of the shepherd, Artan remembered that he had not said his prayers and sang the vesper hymn.

He lay back and listened. There were no bells calling across the water. He looked into the depths. It was Manann's kingdom, and he had never heard that God was there; but he looked. Then he stared into the dark-blue star-strewn sky.

Suddenly he touched Thorkeld.

"Tell me," he said, "how far north has the Cross of Christ come?"

"By the sea way it has not come here yet. Murdoch the Freckled came with it this way, but he was pulled into the sea, and he died."

"Who pulled him into the sea?"

Thorkeld stared into the running wave. He had no words.

Artan lay still for a long while.

"It will go ill with me," he thought, "if Mary cannot see me so far away from Iona, and if God will not listen to me. Colum should have known that, and given me a holy leaf with the fair branching letters on it, and the Latin words that are the words of God."

Then he spoke to the man who had sung.

"Do you know of Mary, and God, and the Son, and the Spirit?"

"You have too many Gods, Culdee," answered the Pict sullenly: "for of these one is your god's son, and the other is the woman his mother, and the third is the ghost of an ancestor."

Artan frowned.

"The curse of the God of Peace upon you for that," he said angrily; "do you know that you have hell for your dwelling-place if you speak evil of God the Father, and the Son, and the Mother of God?"

"How long have they been in Iona, White-Robe?"

The man spoke scornfully. Artan knew they had not been there many years. He had no words.

"My father worshipped the Sun on the Holy Isle before ever your great Druid that is called Colum crossed the Moyle. Were your three gods in the coracle with Colum? They were not on the Holy Isle when he came."

"They were coming there," answered Artan confusedly. "It is a long, long way from--from--from the place they were sailing from."

Necta listened sullenly.

"Let them stay on Iona," he said: "gods though they be, it would fare ill with them if they came upon the Woman with the Net." Then he turned on his side, and lay by the man Darach, who was staring at the moon and muttering words that neither Artan nor Thorkeld knew.

A white calm fell. The boat lay like a leaf on a silent pool. There was nothing between that dim wilderness and the vast sweeping blackness filled with quivering stars, but the coracle, that a wave could crush.

At times, I doubt not, there must have been weaker brethren among these simple and devoted Culdees of Iona, though in Colum's own day there was probably none (unless it were Oran) who was not the visible outward shrine of a pure flame.

Thinking of such an one, and not without furtive pagan sympathy, I wrote the other day these lines, which I may also add here as a further side-light upon that half-Pagan, half-Christian basis upon which the Columban Church of Iona stood.

Balva the old monk I am called: when I was young, Balva Honeymouth.
That was before Colum the White came to Iona in the West.
She whom I loved was a woman whom I won out of the South.
And I had a good heaven with my lips on hers and with breast to
breast.

Balva the old monk I am called: were it not for the fear
That the soul of Colum the White would meet my soul in the Narrows
That sever the living and dead, I would rise up from here,
And go back to where men pray with spears and arrows.

Balva the old monk I am called: ugh! ugh! the cold bell of the
matins--'tis dawn!
Sure it's a dream I have had that I was in a warm wood with the sun
ashine,
And that against me in the pleasant greenness was a soft fawn,
And a voice that whispered "Balva Honeymouth, drink, I am thy wine!"

As I write,[7] here on the hill-slope of Dun-I, the sound of the furtive wave is as the sighing in a shell. I am alone between sea and sky, for there is no other on this bouldered height, nothing visible but a single blue shadow that slowly sails the hillside. The bleating of lambs and ewes, the lowing of kine, these come up from the Machar that lies between the west slopes and the shoreless sea to the west; these ascend as the very smoke of sound. All round the island there is a continuous breathing; deeper and more prolonged on the west, where the open sea is; but audible everywhere. The seals on Soa are even now putting their breasts against the running tide; for I see a flashing of fins here and there in patches at the north end of the Sound, and already from the ruddy granite shores of the Ross there is a congregation of seafowl--gannets and guillemots, skuas and herring-gulls, the long-necked northern diver, the tern, the cormorant. In the sunblaze, the waters of the Sound dance their blue bodies and swirl their flashing white hair o' foam; and, as I look, they seem to me like children of the wind and the sunshine, leaping and running in these flowing pastures, with a laughter as sweet against the ears as the voices of children at play.

The joy of life vibrates everywhere. Yet the Weaver does not sleep, but only dreams. He loves the sun-drowned shadows. They are invisible thus, but they are there, in the sunlight itself. Sure, they may be heard: as, an hour ago, when on my way hither by the Stairway of the Kings--for so sometimes they call here the ancient stones of the mouldered princes of long ago--I heard a mother moaning because of the son that had had to go over-sea and leave her in her old age; and heard also a child sobbing, because of the sorrow of childhood--that sorrow so unfathomable, so incommunicable. And yet not a stone's-throw from where I lie, half hidden beneath an overhanging rock, is the Pool of Healing. To this small, black-brown tarn, pilgrims of every generation, for hundreds of years, have come. Solitary, these; not only because the pilgrim to the Fount of Eternal Youth must fare hither alone, and at dawn, so as to touch the healing water the moment the first sunray quickens it--but solitary, also, because those who go in quest of this Fount of Youth are the dreamers and the Children of Dream, and these are not many, and few come now to this lonely place. Yet, an Isle of Dream Iona is, indeed. Here the last sun-worshippers bowed before the Rising of God; here Columba and his hymning priests laboured and brooded; and here Oran or his kin dreamed beneath the monkish cowl that pagan dream of his. Here, too, the eyes of Fionn and Oisin, and of many another of the heroic men and women of the Fianna, may have lingered; here the Pict and the Celt bowed beneath the yoke of the Norse pirate, who, too, left his dreams, or rather his strangely beautiful soul-rainbows, as a heritage to the stricken; here, for century after century, the Gael has lived, suffered, joyed, dreamed his impossible, beautiful dream; as here, now, he still lives, still suffers patiently, still dreams, and through all and over all, broods upon the incalculable mysteries. He is an elemental, among the elemental forces. He knows the voices of wind and sea: and it is because the Fount of Youth upon Dun-I of Iona is not the only wellspring of peace, that the Gael can front destiny as he does, and can endure. Who knows where its tributaries are? They may be in your heart, or in mine, and in a myriad others.

I would that the birds of Angus Og might, for once, be changed, not, as fabled, into the kisses of love, but into doves of peace, that they might fly into the green world, and nest there in many hearts, in many minds, crooning their incommunicable song of joy and hope.

A doomed and passing race. I have been taken to task for these words. But they are true, in the deep reality where they obtain. Yes, but true only in one sense, however vital that is. The Breton's eyes are slowly turning from the enchanted West, and slowly his ears are forgetting the whisper of the wind around menhir and dolmen. The Manxman has ever been the mere yeoman of the Celtic chivalry; but even his rude dialect perishes year by year. In Wales, a great tradition survives; in Ireland, a supreme tradition fades through sunset-hued horizons; in Celtic Scotland, a passionate regret, a despairing love and longing, narrows yearly before a dull and incredibly selfish alienism. The Celt has at last reached his horizon. There is no shore beyond. He knows it. This has been the burden of his song since Malvina led the blind Oisin to his grave by the sea: "Even the Children of Light must go down into darkness." But this apparition of a passing race is no more than the fulfilment of a glorious resurrection before our very eyes. For the genius of the Celtic race stands out now with averted torch, and the light of it is a glory before the eyes, and the flame of it is blown into the hearts of the stronger people. The Celt fades, but his spirit rises in the heart and the mind of the Anglo-Celtic peoples, with whom are the destinies of generations to come.

I stop, and look seaward from this hillslope of Dun-I. Yes, even in this Isle of Joy, as it seems in this dazzle of golden light and splashing wave, there is the like mortal gloom and immortal mystery which moved the minds of the old seers and bards. Yonder, where that thin spray quivers against the thyme-set cliff, is the Spouting Cave, where to this day the Mar-Tarbh, dread creature of the sea, swims at the full of the tide. Beyond, out of sight behind these craggy steeps, is Port-na-Churaich, where, a thousand years ago, Columba landed in his coracle. Here, eastward, is the landing-place, for the dead of old, brought hence out of Christendom for sacred burial in the Isle of the Saints. All the story of the Gael is here. Iona is the microcosm of the Gaelic world.

Last night, about the hour of the sun's going, I lay upon the heights near the Cave, overlooking the Machar--the sandy, rock-frontiered plain of duneland on the west side of Iona, exposed to the Atlantic. There was neither bird nor beast, no living thing to see, save one solitary human creature. The man toiled at kelp-burning. I watched the smoke till it merged into the sea-mist that came creeping swiftly out of the north, and down from Dun-I eastward. At last nothing was visible. The mist shrouded everything. I could hear the dull, rhythmic beat of the waves. That was all. No sound, nothing visible.

It was, or seemed, a long while before a rapid thud-thud trampled the heavy air. Then I heard the rush, the stamping and neighing, of some young mares, pasturing there, as they raced to and fro, bewildered or perchance in play. A glimpse I caught of three, with flying manes and tails; the others were blurred shadows only. A swirl, and the mist disclosed them; a swirl, and the mist enfolded them again. Then, silence once more.

Abruptly, though not for a long time thereafter, the mist rose and drifted seaward.

All was as before. The kelp-burner still stood, straking the smouldering seaweed. Above him a column ascended, bluely spiral, dusked with shadow.

The kelp-burner: who was he but the Gael of the Isles? Who but the Gael in his old-world sorrow? The mist falls and the mist rises. He is there all the same, behind it, part of it; and the column of smoke is the incense out of his longing heart that desires Heaven and Earth, and is dowered only with poverty and pain, hunger and weariness, a little isle of the seas, a great hope, and the love of love.

But ... to the island-story once more!

Some day, surely, the historian of Iona will appear.

How many "history-books" there are like dead leaves. The simile is a travesty. There is no little russet leaf of the forest that could not carry more real, more intimate knowledge. There is no leaf that could not reveal mystery of form, mystery of colour, wonder of structure, secret of growth, the law of harmony; that could not testify to birth, and change, and decay, and death; and what history tells us more?--that could not, to the inward ear, bring the sound of the south wind making a greenness in the woods of Spring, the west wind calling his brown and red flocks to the fold.

What a book it will be! It will reveal to us the secret of what Oisin sang, what Merlin knew, what Columba dreamed, what Adamnan hoped: what this little "lamp of Christ" was to pagan Europe; what incense of testimony it flung upon the winds; what saints and heroes went out of it; how the dust of kings and princes were brought there to mingle with its sands; how the noble and the ignoble came to it across long seas and perilous countries. It will tell, too, how the Danes ravaged the isles of the west, and left not only their seed for the strengthening of an older race, but imageries and words, words and imageries so alive to-day that the listener in the mind may hear the cries of the viking above the voice of the Gael and the more ancient tongue of the Pict. It will tell, too, how the nettle came to shed her snow above kings' heads, and the thistle to wave where bishops' mitres stood; how a simple people out of the hills and moors, remembering ancient wisdom or blindly cherishing forgotten symbols, sought here the fount of youth; and how, slowly, a long sleep fell upon the island, and only the grasses shaken in the wind, and the wind itself, and the broken shadows of dreams in the minds of the old, held the secret of Iona. And, at the last--with what lift, with what joy--it will tell how once more the doves of hope and peace have passed over its white sands, this little holy land! This little holy land! Ah, white doves, come again! A thousand thousand wait.

FOOTNOTES:

[2] A more polished later version, though attributed to Columba, runs:--

"An I mo chridhe, I mo ghraidh
An aite guth mhanach bidh geum ba;
Ach mu'n tig an saoghal gu crich,
Bithidh I mar a bha."

(In effect: _In Iona that is my heart's desire, Iona that is my love, the lowing of cows shall yet replace the voices of monks: but before the end is come Iona shall again be as it was._)

[3] In a beautiful old Scoto-Gaelic ballad, the "Bas Fhraoich," occurs the line, _Thuit i air an traigh na neul_, "she fell on the shore as a mist," though here finely used for a swoon only.

[4] An allusion to the Hebridean proverb, _Ma dh' itheas tu cridh an eoin, bidh do chridhe air chrith ri d' bheo_ ("If you eat the bird's heart, your heart will palpitate for ever.")

[5] The Irish pipes are called "Piob-theannaich" to distinguish them from the "Piob" or "Piob-Mhor" of the Highlands.

[6] _The Dominion of Dreams_, 1st Ed.

[7] See Notes, p. 429.

BY SUNDOWN SHORES

"_Cette ame qui se lamente
En cette plaine dormante
C'est la notre n'est-ce pas?
La mienne, dis, et la tienne,
Dont s'exhale l'humble antienne
Par ce tiede soir, tout, bas?_"

By Sundown Shores

"_'N hano ann Tad, ar Mab hac ar Spered-Zantel,
Homan' zo'r ganaouenn zavet en Breiz-Izel!
Zavet gant eur paour-kez, en Ar-goat, en Ar-vor,
Kanet anez-hi, pewienn, hac ho pezo digor._"

"In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit
This song of mine was raised in my Breton Fatherland,
In Argoat forest-clad, in Arvor of the grey wave:
Sing it, wayfarers, and all gates will open before you."

I do not know the name of the obscure minstrel who sang this song, as he passed from village to village, by the coasts, along the heath-lands of Brittany. But there are poets who have no name and no country, because they are named by the secret name of the longing of many minds, and mysteriously come from and pass to the Land of Heart's Desire, which is their own land. This wandering Breton minstrel is of that company. His sone is familiar. I have heard it where Connemara breaks in grey rock and sudden pastures to the sea: where only the wind and the heather people the solitudes of Argyll: where the silent Isles shelve to perpetual foam. He speaks for all his brotherhood of Armorica: he speaks also for the greater brotherhood of his race, the broken peoples who now stand upon the sundown shores, from wild Ushant to the cliffs of Achil, from St. Bride's Bay to solitary St. Kilda. He is not only the genius of Arvor, daughter of dreams, but the genius of a race whose farewell is in a tragic lighting of torches of beauty around its grave. For it is the soul of the Celt who wanders homeless to-day, with his pathetic burthen that his _sone_ was made by ancestral woods, by the unchanging sea; dreaming the enchanted air will open all doors. Alas! few doors open: the wayfarer must not tarry. Memories and echoes he may leave, but he must turn his face. Grey dolmen and grey menhir already stand there, by the last shores, memorials of his destiny.

The ancient Gaels believed that in the western ocean there was an island called Hy Brasil, where all that was beautiful and mysterious lived beyond the pillars of the rainbow. The legendary romances of the Celtic races may be described as the Hy Brasil of literature.

In the Celtic commune there are many legendary tales which, but for the accident of names and local circumstances, are identical. The familiar Highland legend of the children who, bathing in a mountain loch, were carried off by a water-horse, has its counterpart in Connemara, in Merioneth, and in Finistere, though in the Welsh recital the children are the victims of a dragon, and in the Breton legend the monster is a boar. For that matter, this elemental tale has its roots in the east, and Macedonia and the Himalaya retain the memory of what Aryan wagoners told by the camp-fires during their centuries-long immigration into Europe. Whether, however, a tale be universal or strictly Celtic, generally it has a parallel in one or all of the racial dialects. True, there are legendary cycles which are local. The Arzur of Brittany is a mere echo in the Hebrides, and the name of Cuculain or the fame of the Red Branch has not reached the dunes of Armorica. Nevertheless, even in the mythopoeic tales there is a kindred character. Nomenoe may have been a Breton Fionn, though he had no Oisin to wed his deeds to a deathless music; and Diarmid and Grainne have loved beneath the oaks of Broceliande or the beech-groves of Llanidris, as well as among the hills of Erin, or in the rocky fastnesses of Morven. It is characteristic, too, how Celtland has given to Celtland. Scotland gave Ireland St. Patrick; Ireland gave Scotland St. Columba; the chief bard of Armorica came from Wales; and Cornwall has the Arthurian fame which is the meed of Kymric Caledonia. To this day no man can say whether Oisin, old and blind, wandered at the last to Drumadoon in Arran, or if indeed he followed out of Erin the sweet voice from Tirnan-Og, and was seen or heard of by none, till three centuries later the bells of the clerics and the admonitions of Patrick made his days a burden not to be borne. Did not the greatest of Irish kings die in tributary lands by the banks of the Loire, and who has seen the moss of that lost grave in Broceliande where Merlin of the North lay down to a long sleep?

Even where there seems no probability of a common origin, there is often a striking similarity in the matter and the manner of folk-tales, particularly those which narrate the strange experiences of the saints. Thus, for example, in one of the most beautiful of the legendary stories given in _The Shadow of Arvor_[8] there is an account of how Gradlon, "the honoured chief of Kerne, the monarch who built Ys, and on whose brow were united the crowns of Armorica," having voluntarily become a wandering beggar, arrived at last in the heart of an ancient forest: "towering moss-clad pillars bearing a heavy roof of foliage, full of the mystery of a cathedral aisle by night." Here the king vowed to build a great temple, but before he could fulfil his vow he died. Gwennole the monk had missed Gradlon, and had followed him to the forest, to find him there on the morrow, lying on a bed of moss which the fallen leaves had flecked with gold. Near him crouched a human figure. This was Primel the anchorite. Note how the king speaks to the Christian monk Gwennole concerning this ancient hermit. "Have mercy on this poor old man beside me: the length of three men's lives has been his, and he has known the deeps of sorrow. The sorrows which have come upon me are nothing to his; for while I have wept over the fate of my royal city, and while for Ahez my heart has been broken, this man has lost his gods. There is no sorrow that is so great a sorrow. He is a Druid lamenting a dead faith. Show him tenderness." Therewith Gradlon dies. Over the dead king "Gwennole murmured a Latin chant; the druid in a tremulous voice intoned a refrain in an unknown tongue; and Gradlon, ruler of the sea, slept in that glade watched over by the priest of Christ and by the last surviving servant of Teutates.... There, amid the majestic solitudes of the forest, the two religions of the ancient race joined hands and were at one before the mystery of death." Later, the druid bids Gwennole build a Christian sanctuary on the spot where "the belated ministrant of a fallen faith" died beside Gradlon Maur, the Great King. One strange touch of bitterness occurs. "But," exclaims Gwennole, "if the sanctuary be reared here, we shall invade thy last refuge." "As for me ...!" replies the old man; then, after a silence he adds, with a gesture of infinite weariness, "it is my gods who should protect me. Let them save me if they can." The dying druid turns away to seek his long rest under the sacred oaks: "Gwennole, his heart full of a tender love and pity which he could not understand, moved slowly towards the sea." A fitting close to a book full of interest, charm, and spiritual beauty.

In the third book of St. Adamnan's _Life of St. Columba_, there is an episode entitled "Of a manifestation of angels meeting the soul of one Emchath." Columba, "making his way beyond the Ridge of Britain (Drum-Alban), near the lake of the river Nisa (Loch Ness), being suddenly inspired by the Holy Spirit, says to the brethren who are journeying with him at that time: 'Let us make haste to meet the holy angels who, that they may carry away the soul of a certain heathen man, who is keeping the moral law of nature even to extreme old age, have been sent out from the highest regions of heaven, and are waiting until we come thither, that we may baptize him in time before he dies.' Thereafter the aged saint made as much haste as he could to go in advance of his companions, until he came to the district which is named Airchartdan (Glen Urquhart)." There he found "the holy heathen man," Emchath by name.

Here, then, is an instance of a Celtic priest in Armorica and of a Celtic priest in Scotland acting identically towards an upright heathen. A large book would be necessary to relate the correspondence between the folk-tales, the traditional romances, and the Christian legends of the four great branches of the Celtic race.