Part 4

“Is it you, O Colum, that bade the children of Hy run away from me, because I was a moon-child, and might win them by the sea-spell into the green wave?”

“Ay, God forgive me!”

“Sure, dear Colum, it was to the glory of God, it was?”

“Ay, He knoweth it, and can hear it, too, from Murtagh, who died this night.”

“Look!”

And at that Colum looked, and in a moon-gold wave he saw Black Angus, the seal-man, drifting dark, and the eyes in his round head were the eyes of love. And beside the man-seal swam a woman fair to see, and she looked at him with joy, and with joy at the Moon-Child that was her own, and at Colum with joy.

Thereupon Colum fell upon his knees and cried—

“Give me thy sorrow, wild woman of the sea!”

“Peace to you, Colum,” she answered, and sank into the shadow-thridden wave.

“Give my thy death and crucifixion, O Angus-dhu!” cried the Saint, shaking with the sorrow.

“Peace to you, Colum,” answered the man-seal, and sank into the dusky quietudes of the deep.

“Ah, bitter heart o’ me! Teach me the way to God, O little child,” cried Colum the old, turning to where the Moon-Child was!

But lo, the glory and the wonder!

It was a little naked child that looked at him with healing eyes, but there were no sea-weeds in her hair, and no shell in the little wee hands of her. For now, it was a male Child that was there, shining with a light from within: and in his fair sunny hair was a shadowy crown of thorns, and in his hand was a pearl of great price.

“O Christ, my God,” said Colum, with failing voice.

“It is thine now, O Colum,” said the Moon-Child, holding out to him the shining pearl of great price.

“What is it, O Lord my God?” whispered the old servant of God that was now glad with the gladness: “what is this, thy boon?”

“Perfect Peace.”

_And that is all._ (_To God be the Glory. Amen._)

_THE MELANCHOLY OF ULAD_

THE MELANCHOLY OF ULAD

In the sea-loch now known as that of Tarbert of Loch Fyne, but in the old far-off days named the Haven of the Foray, there was once a grianân, a sunbower, of so great a beauty that thereto the strings of the singing men’s clarsachs vibrated even in far-away Ireland.

This was in the days before the yellow-haired men out of Lochlin came swarming in their galleys, along the lochs and fjords of the west. So long ago was it that none knows if Ulad sang his song to Fand before Diarmid the Fair was slain on the narrow place between the two lochs, or if it were when Colum’s white-robes were wont to come out of the open sea up the Loch of the Swans, that is now West Loch Tarbert, so as to reach the inlands.

But of what import is the whitherset of bygone days, where the tale of the years and of the generations is as that of autumn’s leaves?

Ulad was there, the poet-king: and Fand, whom he loved: and Life and Death.

Ian Mòr, of whom I have written, told me the tale many years ago. I cannot recall all he said, and I know well that the echo of ancient music that was below his words, as he spoke in the gloaming before the peats, and in the ancient tongue of our people, is not now what it was then.

None knows whence Ulad came. In the Isles of the West men said he was a prince out of the realm of the Ultonians; but there, in the north of Eiré, they said he was a king in the southlands. Art the White, the wise old Ardrigh of the peoples who dwelt among the lake-lands far south, spoke of Ulad as one born under a solitary star on the night of the Festival of Beltane, and told that he came out of an ancient land north or south of Muirnict, the sea which has the feet of Wales and Cornwall upon its sunrise side and the rocks and sands of Armorica upon that where the light reddens the west. But upon Ioua, that is now Iona, there was one wiser even than Art the White, Dùach the Druid: and when questioned as to Ulad the poet-king, he said he was of the ancient people that dwelt among the inlands of Alba, the old race that had known the divine folk, the Tuatha-de-Danann, when they were seen of men and no mortality was upon their sweet clay. The islanders were awed by what Dùach told them, for what manner of man could this be who had seen Merlin going tranced through the woods, playing upon a reed, with wolves fawning upon him, and the noise of eagles’ wings ruffling the greenglooms of the forest overhead?

And of Fand, who knows aught? Bêl the Harper, whose songs and playing made women’s hearts melt like wax, and in men wrought either intolerable longing or put sudden swift flames into the blood, sang of her. And what he sang was this: that Ulad had fared once to Hy Bràsil and had there beheld a garth of white blooms, fragrant and wonderful, under the hither base of a rainbow. These flowers he had gathered, and warmed all night against his breast, and at dawn breathed into them. When the sunbreak slid a rising line along the dawn he blew a frith across the palm of his left hand. What had been white blooms, made rosy with his breath and warm against his side, was a woman. It was Fand.

Who, then, can tell whether Ulad were old or young when he came to the Haven of the Foray. He had the old ancient wisdom, and mayhap knew how to wrap himself round with the green life that endures.

None knew of his being in that place, till, one set of a disastrous day, a birlinn drove in before the tempest sweeping from the isle of Arran up the great sea-loch of Fionn. The oarsmen drew breath when the headlands were past, and then stared with amaze. Overagainst the bay in the little rocky promontory on the north side was a house built wondrously, and that where no house had stood, and after a fashion that not one of them had seen, and all marvelled with wide eyes. The sunset flamed upon it, so that its shining walls were glorious. A small round grianân it was, but built all of blocks and stones of hill-crystal, and upborne upon four great pine-boles driven deep into the tangled grass and sand, with these hung about with deerskins and fells of wolf and other savagery.

Before this grianân the men in the birlinn, upon whom silence had fallen, and whose listless oars made no lapping upon the foam-white small leaping waves of the haven, beheld a man lying face downward.

For a time they thought the man was dead. It was one, they said, some great one, who had perished at the feet of his desire. Others thought he was a king who had come there to die alone, as Conn the Solitary had done, when he had known all that man can know. And some feared that the prone man was a demon, and the shining grianân a dreadful place of spells. The howling of a wolf, in the opposite glen that is called Strathnamara, brought sweat upon their backs: for when the half-human wish evil upon men they hide their faces, and the howling of a she-wolf is heard.

But of a sudden the helmsman made a sign. “It is Ulad,” he whispered hoarsely, because of the salt in his throat after that day of flight and long weariness: “It is Ulad the Wonder-Smith.”

Then all there were glad, for each man knew that Ulad the Wonder-Smith, that was a poet and a king, wrought no ill against any clan, and that wherever he was the swords slept.

Nevertheless they marvelled much that he was there alone, and in that silence, with his face prone upon the wilderness, while the sunset flamed overagainst the grianân that was now like wine, or like springing blood light and wonderful. But as tide and wind brought the birlinn close upon the shore, they heard a twofold noise, a rumour of strange sound. One looked at the other, with amaze that grew into fear. For the twofold sound was wrought of the muffled sobs and prayers of the man that lay upon the grass and of the laughter of the woman that was unseen, but who was within the grianân.

Connla, the helmsman and leader of the seafarers, waved to his fellows to pull the birlinn close in among the weedy masses which hung from the rocks. When the galley lay there, all but hidden, and each man’s head was beneath the wrack, Connla rose. Slowly he moved to where Ulad lay, face downward, upon the silt of sand and broken rock that was in front of the grianân. But, before he could speak, the young king rose, though not seeing the newcomer, and, looking upon the sunbower, whence the laughter suddenly ceased, raised his arms.

Then, when he had raised his arms, song was upon his lips. It was a strange chant that Connla heard, and had the sound in it of the wind far out at sea, or of a tempest moving across treeless moors, mournful, wild, filled with ancient sorrow and a crying that none can interpret. And the words of it, familiar to the helmsman, and yet with a strange lip-life upon them, were as these:—

_Ah you in the grianân there, whose laughter is on me as fire-flames, What of the sorrow of sorrows that is mine because of my loving— You that came to me out of the place where the rainbows are builded, Is it woman you are, O Fand, who laughest up there in thy silence?

Sure, I have loved thee through storm and peace, through the day and the night; Sure, I have set the singing of songs to a marvellous swan-song for thee, And death I have dared, and life have I dared, and gloom and the grave, And yet, O Fand, thou laughest down on my pain, on my pain, O Fand.

All things have I thrown away gladly only to win thee— Kingship and lordship of men, the fame of the sword, and all good things— For in thee at the last, I dreamed, in thee, O Fand, Queen of Women, I had found all that a man may find, and was as the gods who die not.

But what of all this to me, who am Ulad the King, the Harper, Ulad the Singer of Songs that are fire in the hearts of the hearers, Ulad the Wonder-Smith, who can bridle the winds and the billows, Can lay waste the greatest of Dûns or build grianâns here in the wilds—

What of all this to me, who am only a man that seeketh, That seeketh for ever and ever the Soul that is fellow to his— The Soul that is thee, O Fand, who wert born of flowers ’neath the rainbow, Breathed with my breath, warmed at my breast, O Fand, whom I love and I worship?

For all things are vain unto me, but one thing only, and that not vain is— My Dream, my Passion, my Hope, my Fand, whom I won from Hy Bràsil: O Dream of my life, my Glory, O Rose of the World, my Dream, Lo, death for Ulad the King, if thou failest, for all that I am of the Danann who die not._

And when he had chanted these words, Ulad, who was young and wondrous fair to look upon, held out his arms to Fand, whom yet he did not see, for she was within the grianân.

“Then, if even not yet at the setting of the day,” the king muttered, “patience shall be upon me till the coming of a new day, and then it may be that Fand will hear my prayer.”

And so the night fell. But when the screaming of the gulls came over the loch, and the plaintive crying of the lapwings was upon the moorland, and the smell of loneroid and bracken was heavy in the wind-fallen stillness, Ulad turned, for he felt a touch upon his shoulder.

It was Connla who touched him, and he knew the man. He had the old wisdom of knowing all that is in the mind by looking into the eyes, and he knew how the man had come there.

“Let the men who are your men, O Connla, move away from here in their birlinn, and go farther up into the haven.”

And because he was a Wonder-Smith, and knew all, the islander did as Ulad bade, and without question. But when they were alone again he spoke.

“Ulad, great lord, I am a man who is as idle sand beneath the feet of you who know the ancient wisdom, and are young with imperishing years, and are a great king in some land I know not of—so, at the least, men say. But I know one thing that you do not know.”

“If you will tell me one thing that I do not know, O Connla, you shall have your heart’s desire.”

Connla laughed at that.

“Not even you, O Ulad, can give me my heart’s desire.”

“And what will that desire be then, you whom the islesmen call Connla the Wise?”

“That one might see in the dew the footsteps of old years returning.”

“That thing, Connla, I cannot do.”

“And yet thou wouldst do what is a thing as vain as that?”

“Speak. I will listen.”

Then Connla drew close to Ulad, and whispered in his ear. Thereafter he gave him a hollow reed with holes in it, such as the shepherding folk use on the hills. And with that he went away into the darkness.

When the moon rose, Ulad took the reed and played upon it. While he played, scales fell from his eyes, and dreams passed from his brain, and his heart grew light. Then he sang:

_Come forth, Fand, come forth, beautiful Fand, my woman, my fawn, The smell of thy falling hair is sweet as the breath of the wild-brier— I weary of this white moonshine who love better the white discs of thy breasts, And the secret song of the gods is faint beside the craving in my blood._

_Fand, Fand, Fand, white one, who art no dream but a woman, Come forth from the grianân, or lo by the word of me, Ulad the King, Forth shalt thou come as a she-wolf, and no more be a woman, Come forth to me, Fand, who am now as a flame for thy burning!_

Thereupon a low laugh was heard, and Fand came forth out of the grianân. White and beautiful she was, the fairest of all women, and Ulad was glad. When near, she whispered in his ears, and hand-in-hand they went back into the grianân.

At dawn Ulad looked upon the beauty of Fand, and he saw she was as a flower.

“O fair and beautiful Dream,” he whispered—but of a sudden Fand laughed in her sleep, and he remembered what Connla the Wise had told him.

“Woman,” Ulad muttered then, “I see well that thou art not my Dream, but only a woman.” And with that he half-rose from her.

Fand opened her eyes, and the beauty of them was greater for the light that was there.

“Then thou art only Ulad, a man?” she cried, and she put her arms about him, and kissed him on the lips and on the breast, sobbing low as with a strange gladness—“I will follow thee, Ulad, to death, for I am thy woman.”

“Ay,” he said, looking beyond her, “if I feed thee, and call thee my woman, and find pleasure in thee, and give thee my manhood.”

“And what else wouldst thou, O Ulad?” Fand asked, wondering.

“I am Ulad the Lonely,” he answered: this, and no more.

Then, later, he took the hollow reed again, and again played.

And when he had played he looked at Fand. He saw into her heart, and into her brain.

“I have dreamed my dream,” he said; “but I am still Ulad the Wonder-Smith.”

With that he blew a frith across the palm of his left hand, and said this thing:—

“O woman that would not come to me, when I called out of that within me which is I myself, farewell!”

And with that Fand was a drift of white flowers there upon the deerskins.

Then once more Ulad spoke.

“O woman, that heeded no bitter prayer which I made, but at the last came only as a she-wolf to the wolf, farewell!”

And with that a wind-eddy scattered the white flowers upon the deerskins, and they wavered hither and thither, and some were stained by the pale wandering fires of a rainbow that drifted over that place, then as now the haunt of these cloudy splendours, forever woven there out of sun and mist.

At noon, the seafarers came towards the grianân with songs, and offerings.

But Ulad was not there.

_ULA AND URLA_

“Rose of all Roses, Rose of all the World! You, too, have come where the dim tides are hurled Upon the wharves of sorrow, and heard ring The bell that calls us on: the sweet far thing. Beauty grown sad with its eternity Made you of us, and of the dim grey sea.”

ULA AND URLA

Ula and Urla were under vow to meet by the Stone of Sorrow. But Ula, dying first, stumbled blindfold when he passed the Shadowy Gate; and, till Urla’s hour was upon her, she remembered not.[3]

These were the names that had been given to them in the north isles, when the birlinn that ran down the war-galley of the vikings brought them before the Maormor.

No word had they spoken that day, and no name. They were of the Gael, though Ula’s hair was yellow, and though his eyes were blue as the heart of a wave. They would ask nothing, for both were in love with death. The Maormor of Siol Tormaid looked at Urla, and his desire gnawed at his heart. But he knew what was in her mind, because he saw into it through her eyes, and he feared the sudden slaying in the dark.

Nevertheless, he brooded night and day upon her beauty. Her skin was more white than the foam of the moon: her eyes were as a star-lit dewy dusk. When she moved, he saw her like a doe in the fern: when she stooped, it was as the fall of wind-swayed water. In his eyes there was a shimmer as of the sunflood in a calm sea. In that dazzle he was led astray.

“Go,” he said to Ula, on a day of the days. “Go: the men of Siol Torquil will take you to the south isles, and so you can hale to your own place, be it Eirèann or Manannan, or wherever the south wind puts its hand upon your home.”

It was on that day Ula spoke for the first time.

“I will go, Coll mac Torcall; but I go not alone. Urla that I love goes whither I go.”

“She is my spoil. But, man out of Eirèann—for so I know you to be, because of the manner of your speech—tell me this: Of what clan and what place are you, and whence is Urla come; and by what shore was it that the men of Lochlin whom we slew took you and her out of the sea, as you swam against the sun, with waving swords upon the strand when the viking-boat carried you away?”

“How know you these things?” asked Ula, that had been Isla, son of the king of Islay.

“One of the sea-rovers spake before he died.”

“Then let the viking speak again. I have nought to say.”

With that the Maormor frowned, but said no more. That eve Ula was seized, as he walked in the dusk by the sea, singing low to himself an ancient song.

“Is it death?” he said, remembering another day when he and Eilidh, that they called Urla, had the same asking upon their lips.

“It is death.”

Ula frowned, but spake no word for a time. Then he spake.

“Let me say one word with Urla.”

“No word canst thou have. She, too, must die.”

Ula laughed low at that.

“I am ready,” he said. And they slew him with a spear.

When they told Urla, she rose from the deerskins and went down to the shore. She said no word then. But she stooped, and she put her lips upon his cold lips, and she whispered in his unhearing ear.

That night Coll mac Torcall went secretly to where Urla was. When he entered, a groan came to his lips and there was froth there: and that was because the spear that had slain Ula was thrust betwixt his shoulders by one who stood in the shadow. He lay there till the dawn. When they found Coll the Maormor he was like a seal speared upon a rock, for he had his hands out, and his head was between them, and his face was downward.

“Eat dust, slain wolf,” was all that Eilidh, whom they called Urla, said, ere she moved away from that place in the darkness of the night.

When the sun rose, Urla was in a glen among the hills. A man who shepherded there took her to his mate. They gave her milk, and because of her beauty and the frozen silence of her eyes, bade her stay with them and be at peace.

They knew in time that she wished death. But first, there was the birthing of the child.

“It was Isla’s will,” she said to the woman. Ula was but the shadow of a bird’s wing: an idle name. And she, too, was Eilidh once more.

“It was death he gave you when he gave you the child,” said the woman once.

“It was life,” answered Eilidh, with her eyes filled with the shadow of dream. And yet another day the woman said to her that it would be well to bear the child and let it die: for beauty was like sunlight on a day of clouds, and if she were to go forth young and alone and so wondrous fair, she would have love, and love is best.

“Truly, love is best,” Eilidh answered. “And because Isla loved me, I would that another Isla came into the world and sang his songs—the songs that were so sweet, and the songs that he never sang, because I gave him death when I gave him life. But now he shall live again, and he and I shall be in one body, in him that I carry now.”

At that the woman understood, and said no more. And so the days grew out of the nights, and the dust of the feet of one month was in the eyes of that which followed after; and this until Eilidh’s time was come.

Dusk after dusk, Ula that was Isla the Singer, waited by the Stone of Sorrow. Then a great weariness came upon him. He made a song there, where he lay in the narrow place; the last song that he made, for after that he heard no trampling of the hours.

The swift years slip and slide adown the steep; The slow years pass; neither will come again. Yon huddled years have weary eyes that weep, These laugh, these moan, these silent frown, these plain, These have their lips acurl with proud disdain.

O years with tears, and tears through weary years, How weary I who in your arms have lain: Now, I am tired: the sound of slipping spears Moves soft, and tears fall in a bloody rain, And the chill footless years go over me who am slain.

I hear, as in a wood, dim with old light, the rain, Slow falling; old, old, weary, human tears: And in the deepening dark my comfort is my Pain, Sole comfort left of all my hopes and fears, Pain that alone survives, gaunt hound of the shadowy years.

But, at the last, after many days, he stirred. There was a song in his ears.

He listened. It was like soft rain in a wood in June. It was like the wind laughing among the leaves.

Then his heart leaped. Sure, it was the voice of Eilidh!

“_Eilidh! Eilidh! Eilidh!_” he cried. But a great weariness came upon him again. He fell asleep, knowing not the little hand that was in his, and the small, flower-sweet body that was warm against his side.

Then the child that was his looked into the singer’s heart, and saw there a mist of rainbows, and midway in that mist was the face of Eilidh, his mother.

Thereafter, the little one looked into his brain that was so still, and he saw the music that was there: and it was the voice of Eilidh his mother.

And, again, the birdeen, that had the blue of Isla’s eyes and the dream of Eilidh’s, looked into Ula’s sleeping soul: and he saw that it was not Isla nor yet Eilidh, but that it was like unto himself, who was made of Eilidh and Isla.

For a long time the child dreamed. Then he put his ear to Isla’s brow, and listened. Ah, the sweet songs that he heard. Ah, bitter-sweet moonseed of song! Into his life they passed, echo after echo, strain after strain, wild air after wild sweet air.

“Isla shall never die,” whispered the child, “for Eilidh loved him. And I am Isla and Eilidh.”

Then the little one put his hands above Isla’s heart. There was a flame there, that the Grave quenched not.

“O flame of love!” sighed the child, and he clasped it to his breast: and it was a moonshine glory about the two hearts that he had, the heart of Isla and the heart of Eilidh, that were thenceforth one.

At dawn he was no longer there. Already the sunrise was warm upon him where he lay, new-born, upon the breast of Eilidh.

“It is the end,” murmured Isla when he waked. “She has never come. For sure, now, the darkness and the silence.”

Then he remembered the words of Maol the Druid, he that was a seer, and had told him of Orchil, the dim goddess who is under the brown earth, in a vast cavern, where she weaves at two looms. With one hand she weaves life upward through the grass; with the other she weaves death downward through the mould; and the sound of the weaving is Eternity, and the name of it in the green world is Time. And, through all, Orchil weaves the weft of Eternal Beauty, that passeth not, though its soul is Change.