Part 2

Make strong your charms against Danaan, Danaan of the snowy breast, Who lured the souls of the Gods of Old To the land of the mystic west.

The feast of Samhain in that year was a time of wonder, for the yew branches on the old altar place of Cromm Cru were struck afire by the lightning, or so it was said. All the people, fearful of the crashing thunder, yet clasped hands in a circle below the mount, while the man with fire made his way to the top and bent to place it when the stroke came. The blaze from the sky flashed down, and flamed upward again, and the stunned man fell downward among his mates and was borne in fear across the valley, and all knew that night that the vengeance of Cromm Cru of the Tor could be a thing to put the fear of death on any man. Let the churchmen say their say ’neath every bell in Erinn, it would not change any man’s mind. And all had known it as a sign of evil to come when the altar of the Ancient People had been defaced.

And there were those, fleeing under the lightning flashes, who vowed they passed Phadraig, son of Nihil, running before the wind with eager gladness in his face, and looking neither to right nor left, and chanting the song of his father as he went down to the sea.

O white Danaan of the sea birds, Danaan of the snowy breast!

And the white birds were screaming and circling above him in the storm as he sang—

She takes my hand at the sea marge, She whispers low on the wind, She sets her sail for Tir-nan-Ogue—

And then a great wave caught the currach he launched and tossed it out on the night, and the white foam made the curtain and hid him from all of life.

Ages on the bosom of the ocean seemed to pass over him after that storm. There was light, and then again there was darkness, but he knew it only through closed eyes in a trance-like dream. He was conscious ever of the whir of wings sweeping over his face and knew the sea birds were there, and then he heard voices, and the laughter of a woman, high and sweet and mocking.

The movement of the boat ceased as it grated on sand. There was a sudden silence, and the sound of running feet.

“But what use to try?” said a sweet, tired voice. “All white things go to Danaan, and look: every bird is white!”

“Danaan comes not out of the forest, and the youth is fair. He is treasure of the sea on our shore; if for her, the birds should have borne him into the lake of the pulsing heart. My hand shall give him to drink.”

Then a cup was held to his lips, a drink of sweet-smelling fruits was offered him. He did not drink. He was no longer in a boat; but in a lady’s bower where bloom was on every bough, and the air heavy with the sweetness of orchards.

“Where am I?” he asked, and out from a shadowy doorway of stone a tall and wondrous woman smiled on him.

“You are in the Summer Land of the Long Day,” she said. “The birds of the sea brought you, and what thing do you seek? For your wishing must be great to win your way here.”

“I do not know the thing I seek,” said Phadraig, whose mind was veiled from the things that had been lived. “I only feel that I shall know again when I find it.”

“Then we will wander, a-seeking,” said the woman of beauty, and took his hand.

Whereupon, without seeming to take a step, he passed through and was a part of a wonderful people. Their slightest cup was of gold, and many wore crowns at will, and held court and ordered games at which all played merrily, and then the crowns were tossed aside as a part of the game no longer amusing. He moved with his mistress, whose name was Una, along the seashore where pleasure boats were held without rope, and he found himself sitting there alone, wondering how the boats were held together, for there was no iron in them, and that word “iron” was the first word his mind had as a link with the old life and changing skies.

For the skies never changed in the Summer Land of the Long Day, and all the people laughed and played games as if to pass the time while waiting. No one told him for what, and when he asked, Una the beautiful would laugh her sweet mocking laugh and bid him to her bower.

“Other earth lovers have come our way, but none like you,” she whispered. “Do you never know you are fairer than blossom on the bough—or golden fruit of living trees?”

“Whence came your orchards where no one labors?” he asked, and she laughed again.

“They are the fair memory of the sunken world to the south—as is this castle of stone by the water’s edge, for what need is there here now for walls of stone?”

“Whose hands made it thus strong here by the sea marge?” he asked, and she took his hand and held it.

“Weary would you fare in this our land if I gave you all the words of that building, for it is ancient as the very earth of which you came. There was no sea at the walls in that day, and the Great White Land of the South was in the midst of waters, and ruled the world. Then the lands broke away and the waters covered it, and only little lands of it kept above the waters or kept the old gods. Your Inis Erinn to the sun side of the world was one, and another one far on the sun-path beyond the waters is one, but the links between have been forgot by the people of Earth. It all lives here because we are the People of Memory. We went out from your Earth Land proudly, letting the body and the soul go that we might hold memory alone, and in that memory we hold only Day and only Summer.”

“Ay,” said Phadraig, and he sat a long time in the tower looking across the moat where the tides of the sea swirled in, “but in all your games and pleasuring, is it not that memory holds you instead, and makes you as endless slaves to the Great Past? Would it not be rest to forget?”

Upon which she drew away from him and screamed at him to begone, for his earth thoughts were cruel as is the iron of the stranger-people in the heart.

He wandered away from that place, and into a wood—and her cries came after him calling him back, but he could find no gate to the moat and he could not go back.

Gay companions danced about him, and made jeweled crowns for him in the games they played, but he looked at the white birds circling above him, and looked at the sea, and wondered whence they had led him, and at times he could close his eyes and see them circling above the black cliffs of Erinn though he had no memory of that place.

And the day was heavy in the Summer Land for the reason that a quest was in his heart, but the mind kept no record.

But white deer came to a lake in the wood to drink, and after them gay fays with shepherds’ staves; and they danced and sang their songs of the woodland things, and that touched his heart more than the games of crowns and castles.

“Make me a shepherd, too,” he said, “for you herd the white things, and the things of white are dear to me.”

“Why is that?” asked a maid of the wood.

But he did not know, and they laughed at him because he did not know, and as they laughed, all suddenly Una, gorgeous and jeweled, flashed in their midst and caught at his hand.

“Not yet have you seen her?” she asked. “Then come with me; I weary for your voice.”

“I am a shepherd of the wood, and herd the deer.”

“The deer need no shepherds; it is only a game to play. Come! I will sing my music and dance you a dance in the woods alone, see! Is the dance not a fair dance?”

“Ay, but I would you could give me the word of why I wander here where this lake wells with the tides of the sea.”

“Come! We will hunt in a forest far away. This lake in the wood is a place we never seek.”

“Yet the white birds come—and the white deer.”

“It is a place where earth life is remembered, and the dread enchantment of night may fall.”

“And the stars?” he asked, for all suddenly he thought of the night as a thing dearly beloved and to be desired more than the Ever Day of the changeless sun. The night stars had been dear to him.

“Ay, and the moon and their mistress. Come out of the dusk of the wood!”

“But I hear music of sweetness here!”

“Come, and I will sing beyond sweetness of woman!”

“I listen.”

“By this lake of Danaan, I may not sing.”

“And that is best,” said Phadraig, for out of the rockwall by the lake, or up from the water, there came the music of dreams on the hill of Cromm Cru, and to an altar of stone by the lake-side came a figure of a maid, and before her and after her swept the white birds of the sea. Her face was veiled as by a cloud circling her to her white feet—and it was the white cloud maid he had visioned in the well where the heart of the sea throbbed as it throbbed here in the lake of the wood.

“Come with me now for pleasure,” said Una of the gold crown and jewel eyes.

And he looked deep into her wondrous eyes and read there the shadow things of some forgotten past.

“Somewhere, in some life, your music of Life has held me, and I followed after. Was I lost in some forest through that following, O Woman of the Memory? And do the white birds of the sea lead me at last out from the shadows of that? This pulse of the lake beats more close to me than the pulse of your heart, O Una, most beautiful! And—I follow my dream!”

And at that the white cloud fell away from the maid, and he saw the white hands of her make new fire in the ancient way on the stone of the altar place, and maids and men in green clasped hands and circled her, and chanted a song he had sometime known of.

Samhain! Samhain! Samhain! Take the new fire! Send the rain! Banish care and banish pain! Speed the ghosts who ban the sheep, Light the path to spirit sleep! This our fire to light the way This eve: Samhain!

And as he heard them he saw again the hill of Cromm Cru and the circled bands there, but never on Cromm Cru or in all the world had he seen such a priest at an altar, for she was all of white and silver and in her hair of gold was a fillet of silver with a crescent moon. And he broke through the circle to kneel by her.

“O new moon of the world!” said Phadraig as he unclasped the strong hand of Una.

“I hear your voice but may not look on you until the prayer is worked. The Lords of Flame send thus the strength of altars to the sun! ’Tis Summer Days’ farewell!”

“The day is endless here—and no farewell!” came the whispered music-sweet voice of Una. “’Tis witchery of Earth, her mother’s earth! I beg you come with me!”

But he made no answer, so thrilled was he by the enchantment of the music of the white maid who gave fire to her men and maids, and bade them to the four ways.

Then she turned and smiled upon him, and in her smile was the glory of dawn.

“You have followed the quest, O King Phadraig, soul of Nihil?” she said.

“Not king, O Wonder Maid! You have given back the name I had lost, but no king am I. I am the son of Nihil, and am your shepherd of the white deer, or knight of yours if fighting men are called.”

“Danaan calls no more battles these many thousand days.”

And with the name came the strange witchery by which he had been held in thrall since the night of Beltain on the heights.

“Danaan—Danaan!” he whispered. “I have followed the quest. Your white birds led the way, O snowy-breasted maid! I am in bond to you these many days!”

“We all are bound by links forged by the gods. What quest was yours?”

“I never knew till now. I thought it but the music of the past—I sought to find it through your magic name—and now—”

“Ay! Wishful human hearts,” she said, and rested her hand on his hair where he knelt beside her. “Come you, and tell me of your life on other shores.”

“I have forgotten all,” he said, and in truth he had; only flashes of vision came to him as she spoke, but they went again.

She laid her hand on his. “Now look again,” she said.

And he looked. And there was the great cliff and the glen by the sea and the sheep on the far moors. And at the door of the cot sat Roiseen spinning the flax, and the white hound at her feet looking out to sea. It was as if he was looking into the eyes of Phadraig, and seeing him, yet taking no note, and Phadraig felt a longing for the shore. He had loved well Roiseen and the hound. And Danaan beside him laughed, and clapped her hands as a child would do.

“I saw it, too!” she said. “And that is the shore my mother loved! Once she made me to see her honeysweet hills. She died with the sickness of longing for them, but never could I see it alone. Oh, lend me your eyes, and look for the deep well in the wood in the valley below the altar—it was there he, my father, found her, and drew her from her people. And she trod with him the Druid Path and came from the pulsing well here to the pulsing lake. Did you know that each is a mirror for all that reflects in the other? It is the path of dreams—and the guide is the living sea. It has led you as it led my mother from the land of Inis Erinn.”

“And when was this?” asked Phadraig, after he had looked with her into the pulsing well and over the cliffs, and in all the places she had been told of and longed to see.

“I only know it is so long ago that the sea is changed there. For the water ran in where you showed me the sheep in the valley. Ay, always I wanted to see that earth life again, and I wished it till you came to me.”

“And I wished for the voice of Danaan out of all the world till my wish met yours somewhere between the shores, and only the sea birds knew!”

She looked at him long, and sighed.

“My mother came for such a wish—and for love, but she could not stay alive with us, and her spirit went out on the wings of the wind to find her way back to the primrose dawns and the purple dusks. How will you go out, O Phadraig the king, when the time comes?”

“Why am I here but to do your will?” he asked. “And since you name me king, then a king’s way must I go out when the time comes; but bear you with me I will, Danaan, my soul.”

“Ay, if that might be,” she said, and played with the girdle of sea pearls about her. “My mother left with me the earth longings else I never had wished you here”—and then she put her hand on his once more and had him look back to the land, and softly she crooned over to herself the charms it held for her through the sick longings of the mother. And when he thought of the night there, and the stars circling above and shining in the still water of the well, she arose and paced the grove.

“Look you,” she said, “the others who abide with me gave up Earth and Spirit in an ancient day that they might live ever in the strong memory of joys that were. My heritage is different—as my spirit is. They never weary for the dusks of the night; I do, because of the bond with earth in me. Thus I make my own world, and do the moon prayers my mother knew, and make the Festivals of the Age of Youth, and here for love of it I have my night all alone where it gives dread to Una lest I plunge them all in shadow—they are in fear of earth enchantings. You are stronger than I, O Phadraig, for you have the soul of the Danaan and the strong earth body. You have fared forth on the quest of Nihil, though you know it not! But Nihil was not a king and the gods decide, Phadraig, that you are to be that. Wearily one more life must you serve ere you win the right to rest.”

“With you, O Danaan?”

“If you will it so, for you are stronger than I, Phadraig.”

“What pledge may I keep?”

She gave him the sharp flint spear from the altar.

“Cut there in the wall of the rock something sacred to you and to the land of my mother.”

He did so, and cut the central star of the north, and the wheel of the wings of it at the four seasons.

“It is the most steadfast sign in our skies,” he said, “and every circling dance of prayer to the gods, old or new, is built on it.”

Then Danaan, holding his hand, stood beside him at the edge of the lake of the tide, and with her finger drew a circle around the symbol there.

“The forest will wither, and the heart of the lake will be still, ere the bond of that circle dies for you and for me,” she said. “If ever you doubt, O Phadraig the king, fare you forth again from your own shores of Inis Erinn and look on the wall and my pledge here. But never look back to it but once in your lifetime, and now—come away!”

He followed where she led, and in a grotto by the sea they sat with clasped hands and she told him what she might of the People of Memory. Yet often she seemed to tell him without words. The music of a wondrous life swept over him in great floods of light unspeakable, and again he could hear an undercurrent of a lament ever dying away, and coming again, and he felt what that meant, too.

“We will not be parting,” he said as he held her. “I say it!”

“That is as may be,” she answered. “I am free of the wood and rule there, yet I belong to the Tuathe de Danaan, and there are bonds of this life.”

“I broke them to find you,” he said.

“So you did. But you have the wonderful earth body, and the doubled strength of Nihil and the others who have longed through the ages to prove the bond they felt. I will be alone. There will be no one to help me.”

“I will help,” he said.

“You have your will, and you see no content till you try,” she said. “But this is the time of trial, and I will not see you linger till your soul goes out on the restless winds crying for the blue of the heather on the hill and the primrose dawns after the sweet nights! It may be a long farewell you are to give me here, Phadraig, O King!”

But he lifted her in his arms as if she had been but an armful of the fragrant blossoms above them, and he strode down to the shore with the white sea birds screaming.

She uttered no word as he placed her in the currach and set it on the waves, and from the castle walls no face looked out. It was as if all the land there, and her heart as well, had been made quiet by the strength of his will to bear her away.

But only the whispered lament of the music was heard, and the world was very still. The birds had ceased whirling above but swept steadily onward as if drifting on the wind, and it was a world of green water and green sky they went into.

But the cold came down, and the birds flew low. He touched the hand of Danaan; it was very cold, and his heart was sick with fear for her. He lifted her to his breast that his body might give her warmth. But it did not, and his very soul seemed frozen with unearthly cold as he lay beside her and held her close.

And then she smiled, the most wonderful smile in the world, into his eyes, and whispered, “I did not know how it would be coming, Phadraig, O King. But it is the farewell—and it is sweet as honey on the hills in your land of love.”

But he could not speak; he could only look on her face until his own eyes closed, and the currach went steadily on through icy air. There was no longer any thought left in him as to where they were borne, for he felt the sleep of death was over them both.

And on the day of Samhain, as the sun went into the western mists and left a path of glory behind, the white hound at the feet of old Roiseen of the Glen stood up looking out to the sea, and the whine of him was like a chained soul in travail. Roiseen looked the way he looked, and in the path of the sun on the water a currach came in to the shore, and over it a white cloud hovered. Yet when it came nearer, the cloud was only white birds flying low on the sea.

“The strength of the saints to us—and Saint Brighde to the fore!” she prayed, for no mortal currach ever came in like that against the tide. And to shepherds bearing yew to the mount of Cromm Cru, she made a call.

“Come you who bear cheer to the ghosts who walk on the night of Samhain,” she said, “come you down to the sea where the ghost of Phadraig, son of Nihil, is waiting on the waves!”

In fear they came, and, led by the white hound, they went down to the sea, and there was Phadraig in the white sleep. But the hound crept near to him and gave tongue in joy, and Roiseen of the Glen lifted his head to her.

“The luck is on him that he yet holds breath,” she said. “Men, take him up. Fiann, make you the fire. Erard, go you for the priest in the cave of the hills, for he is a holy man. Ay! Achone! Phadraig, that you should come back to us with the ice in your blood like this!”

And only the bravest of the men would bear Phadraig, for the others stayed on their knees in fear of the white birds whirling wearily over.

And the night fires of Samhain were sending their flames to the sky when he spoke.

“Danaan, Danaan, it is again I have lost you?”

“He dreams,” said the holy man of the cave where Saint Colman had lived his seven blessed years, and ever after that time the monks lived there in retreat.

“Nay, father, call it not a dream, for it is a part of the life of his people—and he has been bold to go forth to find.”

And that was the time she told, under confession, the legend of the race of Ua Dinan.

He was very aged, and had seen many things on earth, and in hearts, and he did not chide.

“What is the blaze on the night sky?” asked Phadraig. “Do they burn today the yew wet by the rain last night of Samhain?”

The monk looked at the woman.

“Ay, Phadraig, my heart,” she said. “It is the feast fire of Samhain.” But she did not tell him he had gone out with the ghosts of Samhain a year agone, and came back with them!

Then there was sound of horses’ feet, and voices of men of degree, and a chief of Tormond entered the cot and bent the knee to Phadraig, and beyond the door stood many chiefs.

“We have guarded your claim till you came, Phadraig, son of Nihil, son of Ua Dinan,” he said, and the chiefs lifted their lances, and one by one entered the cot and spoke fealty and passed out.

And thus he learned that Danaan spoke true in Tir-nan-Ogue of the Long Day, for Kieran the king had fallen in a raid of the south, and his frail cousin had gone out like a rushlight in the wind.

“Come another day, and I will hearken to you,” he said, “other cares await me this night.”

They went away at that, and Phadraig asked again for Danaan, and was told that the currach was empty but for himself, and was so old that it fell to pieces as the men drew it ashore, and that not lately could it have ever borne the burden of two bodies.

This he knew was not true, and he said it, and the fever of him ran hot, and he talked of the trees of magic where white flower and fruit of gold grew on the same branch, and where music was achingly sweet, and spoke without words! Back there to Tir-nan-Ogue would he go for Danaan, despite all, and he bade them as their king that they bring him a boat for the journey!

And so prayerful were the eyes of Roiseen that the holy man of the cave bade him sleep in peace, for with the rising of the sun the boat would be ready.

“Achone! Ay, father! But what shall we do if he wakens alive and holds you to that?” asked Roiseen, making the sign.

“What is there to do with god or man but to keep the faith?” said the priest. “He is not to be bound or held to life for the cares of this land except he be rowed to some island in the sea, and have the dream blown away on the wind.”

And it was so.

The chiefs waited on his word while he walked the hills with the priest and listened to the music unheard by all but him, and called on Danaan to come alive to him.

Strange tales went abroad that the king walked with angels, and the chiefs were patient, but to the holy man they said he must wear the crown or forfeit it, also that he must wed with a maid of degree, else no chief could bring wife or daughter to the halls of Ua Dinan, as was the custom in Tormond.

Phadraig, the king, listened and laughed with bitter thoughts.

“How may I wed a warm maid of the clans when my arms are yet chilled with the icy bosom of Danaan?” he asked. “The heart of me craves only a boat, and strength to fare forth to the shores where I held her.”