Part 10

Mother Elsie came to him out of the dusk in that wuthering place just like a drifting mist, as he said. She gave him no greeting, but was by his side in silence. Before he knew what she was doing she had the soles of her feet upon his, and her hands folding his, and her eyes burning against his like hot coals against ash. He felt shudders come over him, and a wind blew up and down his back; and he grew giddy, and heard the roaring of the tides in his ears. Then he was quiet. Her voice was very far away when she said this thing, but he remembered every word of it:

By that which dwells within thee, By the lamps that shine upon me, By the white light I see litten From the brain now sleeping stilly, By the silence in the hollows, By the wind that slow subsideth, By the life-tide slowly ebbing, By the deith-tide slowly rising, By the slowly waning warmth, By the chill that slowly groweth, By the dusk that slowly creepeth, By the darkness near thee, By the darkness round thee, By the darkness o'er thee-- O'er thee, round thee, on thee-- By the one that standeth At thy side and waiteth Dumb and deaf and blindly, By the one that moveth, Bendeth, raiseth, watcheth, By the dim Grave-Spell upon thee, By the Silence thou hast wedded.... May the way thy feet are treading, May the tangled lines now crookèd, Clear as moonlight lie before me!

_Oh! oh! ohrone, ochrone! green the branches bonnie: Oh! oh! ohrone! ochrone! red the blood-drop berries: Achrone, arone, arone, arone, I see the green-clad Lady. She walks the road that's wet with tears, with rustling sorrows shady.... Oh! oh! mo ghraidh._

Then it was that a great calm came upon Fergus, though he felt like a drowned man, or as one who stood by his own body, but speechless, and feeling no blowing of wind through his shadow-frame.

For, indeed, though the body lived, he was already of the company of the silent. What was that _caiodh_, that wailing lamentation, sad as the _Cumha fir Arais_, which followed Elsie's incantation, her spell upon "the way" before him, that it and all the trailed lines of this life should be clear as moonlight before her? _Oh! oh! ohrone, ochrone! red the blood-drop berries_; did not these mean no fruit of the quicken-tree, but the falling drops from the maimed tree that was himself? And was not the green-clad lady, she who comes singing low, the sprouting of the green grass that is the hair of the earth? And was not the road, gleaming wet with ruts and pools all of tears, and overhung by dark rustling plumes of sorrow, the road that the soul traverses in the dark hour? And did not all this mean that the Grave Spell was already upon him, and that the Silence was to be his?[10]

[10] (1) _Caiodh_ (a wailing lament) is a difficult word to pronounce. The Irish _keen_ will help the foreigner with _Kúë-yh_ or _Kúë-yhn_. (2) The _Cumha fir Arais_ (pronounce _Kŭv'ah feer Arooss_) means the lament of the man of Aros--_i. e._, the chieftain. Aros Castle, on the great island of Mull, overlooking the Sound, was one of the strongholds of Macdonald, Lord of the Isles. (3) The quicken (rowan, mountain-ash, and other names) is a sacred tree with the Celtic peoples, and its branches can either avert or compel supernatural influences. (4) The green-clad Lady is the Cailleach, the Siren of the Hill-Sides, to see whom portends death or disaster. When she is heard singing, that portends death soon for the hearer. The grass is that which grows quick and green above the dead. The dark hour is the hour of death--_i. e._, the first hour after death.

But what thing it was she saw, Elsie would not say. Darkly she dreamed awhile, then leaned forward and kissed his breast. He felt the sob in her heart throb into his.

Dazed, and knowing that she had seen more than she had dreamed of seeing, and that his hour was striding over the rocky wilderness of that wild Isle of Skye, he did not know she was gone, till a shuddering fear of the silence and the gloom told him he was alone.

* * * * *

Coll MacColl (he that was my Kerrera friend) stopped here, just as a breeze will suddenly stop in a corrie so that the rowan berries on the side of a quicken will sway this way and that, while the long thin leaves on the other will be as still as the stones underneath, where their shadows sleep.

I asked him at last if Elsie's second-sight had proved true. He looked at me for a moment, as though vaguely surprised I should ask so foolish a thing.

* * * * *

No sleep came to Fergus that night, he resumed, quietly, as though no other words were needed, and at daybreak he rose and left the cot of his kinsman, Andrew MacEwan. In the gray dawn he saw my mother, and told her all. Then she wished him farewell, and bade him come again when next the _Sunbeam_ should be sailing to Portree, or other port in Skye; for she did not believe that her mother had seen speedy death, or death at all, but perhaps only a time of sorrow, and even that she had done this thing to send Fergus away, for she too had her eyes on Robert MacColl, that was my father.

"And so you will come again, Fergus my friend," she said; and added, "and perhaps then you will be telling me of a Sunbeam ashore, as well as that you sail from Ardrossan to the far away islands!"

He stared at her as one who hears ill. Then he took her hand in his, and let it go suddenly again. With one arm he rubbed the rough Uist cap he held in his left hand; then he brushed off the wet mist that was gray on his thick black beard.

"You are not well, Fearghas-mo-charaid," my mother said, and gently. When she saw the staring pain in his eyes, she added, with a low sob, "My heart is sore for you!"

With that he turned away, and she saw him no more, that day or any day of all the days to come.

"And what thing happened, Coll?"

"They kept it from her, and she did not know it for long. It was this: Fergus McEwan did not sail far that morning. He was ill, he said, and was put ashore. That night Aulay Macaulay saw him moving about in that frightful place of the Storr Rock, moaning and muttering. He would have spoken to him, but he saw him begin to leap about the pinnacled rocks like a goat, and at last run up to The Old Man of Storr and beat it with his clinched fists, blaspheming with wild words; and he feared Fergus was mad, and he slipped from shadow to shadow, till he fled openly. But in the morning Aulay and his brother Finlay went back to look for Fergus. At first they thought he had been drowned, or had fallen into one of the fissures. But from a _balachan_, a 'bit laddie,' as they would call him in the town over the way [Oban], they heard that a man had pushed off that morning in John Macpherson's boat, that lay about a mile and a half from the Storr, and had sailed north along the coast.

"Well, it was three days before he was found--stone-dead. If you know the Quiraing you will know the great Needle Rock. Only a bird can climb it, as the saying goes. Half-way up, Finlay Macaulay and a man of the neighbourhood saw the body o' Fergus as though it were glued to the rock. It was windless weather, for he would have blown away like a drifted leaf. They had to jerk the body down with net-poles. God save us the dark hour of Fergus, that died like a wild beast!"

III

THE WHITE FEVER

One night, before the peats, I was told this thing by old Cairstine Macdonald, in the isle of Benbecula. It is in her words that I give it:

* * * * *

In the spring of the year that my boy Tormaid died, the moon-daisies were as thick as a woven shroud over the place where Giorsal, the daughter of Ian, the son of Ian MacLeod of Baille 'n Bad-a-sgailich, slept night and day.[11]

[11] _Baille 'n Bad-a-sgailich_: the Farm of the Shadowy Clump of Trees. _Cairstine_, or _Cairistine_, is the Gaelic for _Christian_, as _Tormaid_ is for Norman, and _Giorsal_ for Grace. "The quiet havens" is the beautiful island phrase for graves. Here, also, a swift and fatal consumption that falls upon the doomed is called "The White Fever." By "the mainland," Harris and Lewis are meant.

All that March the cormorants screamed, famished. There were few fish in the sea, and no kelp-weed was washed up by the high tides. In the island and in the near isles, ay, and far north through the mainland, the blight lay. Many sickened. I knew young mothers who had no milk. There are green mounds in Carnan kirk-yard that will be telling you of what this meant. Here and there are little green mounds, each so small that you might cuddle it in your arm under your plaid.

Tormaid sickened. A bad day was that for him when he came home, weary with the sea, and drenched to the skin, because of a gale that caught him and his mates off Barra Head. When the March winds tore down the Minch, and leaped out from over the Cuchullins, and came west, and lay against our homes, where the peats were sodden and there was little food, the minister told me that my lad would be in the quiet havens before long. This was because of the white fever. It was of that same that Giorsal waned, and went out like a thin flame in sunlight.

The son of my man (years ago weary no more) said little ever. He ate nothing almost, even of the next to nothing we had. At nights he couldna sleep because of the cough. The coming of May lifted him awhile. I hoped he would see the autumn; and that if he did, and the herring came, and the harvest was had, and what wi' this and what wi' that, he would forget his Giorsal that lay i' the mools in the quiet place yonder. Maybe then, I thought, the sorrow would go, and take its shadow with it.

One gloaming he came in with all the whiteness of his wasted body in his face. His heart was out of its shell; and mine, too, at the sight of him.[12]

[12] _A cochall a' chridhe_: his heart out of its shell--a phrase often used to express sudden derangement from any shock. The ensuing phrase means the month from the 15th of July to the 15th of August, _Mios crochaidh nan con_, so called as it is supposed to be the hottest if not the most waterless month in the isles. The word _claar_ used below, is the name given a small wooden tub, into which the potatoes are turned when boiled.

This was in the season of the hanging of the dog's mouth.

"What is it, Tormaid-a-ghaolach?" I asked, with the sob that was in my throat.

"_Thraisg mo chridhe_," he muttered (my heart is parched). Then, feeling the asking in my eyes, he said, "I have seen her."

I knew he meant Giorsal. My heart sank. But I wore my nails into the palms of my hands. Then I said this thing, that is an old saying in the isles: "Those who are in the quiet havens hear neither the wind nor the sea." He was so weak he could not lie down in the bed. He was in the big chair before the peats, with his feet on a _claar_.

When the wind was still I read him the Word. A little warm milk was all he would take. I could hear the blood in his lungs sobbing like the ebb-tide in the sea-weed. This was the thing that he said to me:

"She came to me, like a gray mist, beyond the dyke of the green place, near the road. The face of her was gray as a gray dawn, but the voice was hers, though I heard it under a wave, so dull and far was it. And these are her words to me, and mine to her--and the first speaking was mine, for the silence wore me:

Am bheil thu' falbh, O mo ghraidh? _B'idh mi falbh, Mùirnean!_

C'uin a thilleas tu, O mo ghraidh? _Cha till mi an rathad so; Tha an't ait e cumhann-- O mùirnean, mùirnean! B'idh mi falbh an drùgh Am tigh Pharais, Mùirnean!_

Sèol dhomh an rathad, Mo ghraidh! _Thig an so Mùirnean-mo, Thig an so!_

* * * * *

Are you going, My dear one? _Yea, now I am going, Dearest._

When will you come again, My dear one? _I will not return this way; The place is narrow-- O my darling! I will be going to Paradise, Dear, my dear one!_

Show me the way, Heart of my heart! _Come hither, dearest, come hither, Come with me!_

"And then I saw that it was a mist, and that I was alone. But now this night it is that I feel the breath on the soles of my feet."

And with that I knew there was no hope. "_Ma tha sin an dàn!_ ... if that be ordained," was all that rose to my lips. It was that night he died. I fell asleep in the second hour. When I woke in the gray dawn, his face was grayer than that and more cold.

IV

THE SMOOTHING OF THE HAND

Glad am I that wherever and whenever I listen intently I can hear the looms of Nature weaving Beauty and Music. But some of the most beautiful things are learned otherwise--by hazard, in the Way of Pain, or at the Gate of Sorrow.

I learned two things on the day when I saw Sheumas McIan dead upon the heather. He of whom I speak was the son of Ian McIan Alltnalee, but was known throughout the home straths and the countries beyond as Sheumas Dhu, Black James, or, to render the subtler meaning implied in this instance, James the Dark One. I had wondered occasionally at the designation, because Sheumas, if not exactly fair, was not dark. But the name was given to him, as I learned later, because, as commonly rumoured, he knew that which he should not have known.

I had been spending some weeks with Alasdair McIan and his wife Silis (who was my foster-sister), at their farm of Ardoch, high in a remote hill country. One night we were sitting before the peats, listening to the wind crying amid the corries, though, ominously as it seemed to us, there was not a breath in the rowan-tree that grew in the sun's-way by the house. Silis had been singing, but silence had come upon us. In the warm glow from the fire we saw each others' faces. There the silence lay, strangely still and beautiful, as snow in moonlight. Silis's song was one of the _Dana Spioradail_, known in Gaelic as the Hymn of the Looms. I cannot recall it, nor have I ever heard or in any way encountered it again.

It had a lovely refrain, I know not whether its own or added by Silis. I have heard her chant it to other runes and songs. Now, when too late, my regret is deep that I did not take from her lips more of those sorrowful strange songs or chants, with their ancient Celtic melodies, so full of haunting sweet melancholy, which she loved so well. It was with this refrain that, after a long stillness, she startled us that October night. I remember the sudden light in the eyes of Alasdair McIan, and the beat at my heart, when, like rain in a wood, her voice fell unawares upon us out of the silence:

_Oh! oh! ohrone, arone! Oh! Oh! mo ghraidh, mo chridhe! Oh! oh! mo ghraidh, mo chridhe!_[13]

[13] Pronounce mogh-rāy, mogh-rēe (my heart's delight--_lit._, my dear one, my heart).

The wail, and the sudden break in the second line, had always upon me an effect of inexpressible pathos. Often that sad wind-song has been in my ears, when I have been thinking of many things that are passed and are passing.

I know not what made Silis so abruptly begin to sing, and with that wailing couplet only, or why she lapsed at once into silence again. Indeed, my remembrance of the incident at all is due to the circumstance that shortly after Silis had turned her face to the peats again, a knock came to the door, and then Sheumas Dhu entered.

"Why do you sing that lament, Silis, sister of my father?" he asked, after he had seated himself beside me, and spread his thin hands against the peat glow, so that the flame seemed to enter within the flesh.

Silis turned to her nephew, and looked at him, as I thought, questioningly. But she did not speak. He, too, said nothing more, either forgetful of his question, or content with what he had learned or failed to learn through her silence.

The wind had come down from the corries before Sheumas rose to go. He said he was not returning to Alltnalee, but was going upon the hill, for a big herd of deer had come over the ridge of Mel-Mòr. Sheumas, though skilled in all hill and forest craft, was not a sure shot, as was his kinsman and my host, Alasdair McIan.

"You will need help," I remember Alasdair Ardoch saying, mockingly, adding, "_Co dhiubh is fhearr let mise thoir sealladh na fàileadh dhiubh?_"--that is to say, Whether would you rather me to deprive them of sight or smell?

This is a familiar saying among the old sportsmen in my country, where it is believed that a few favoured individuals have the power to deprive deer of either sight or smell, as the occasion suggests.

"_Dhuit ciàr nan carn!_--The gloom of the rocks be upon you!" replied Sheumas, sullenly; "mayhap the hour is come when the red stag will sniff at my nostrils."

With that dark saying he went. None of us saw him again alive.

Was it a forewarning? I have often wondered. Or had he sight of the shadow?

It was three days after this, and shortly after sunrise, that, on crossing the south slope of Mel Mòr with Alasdair Ardoch, we came suddenly upon the body of Sheumas, half submerged in a purple billow of heather. It did not, at the moment, occur to me that he was dead. I had not known that his prolonged absence had been noted, or that he had been searched for. As a matter of fact, he must have died immediately before our approach, for his limbs were still loose, and he lay as a sleeper lies.

Alasdair kneeled and raised his kinsman's head. When it lay upon the purple tussock, the warmth and glow from the sunlit ling gave a fugitive deceptive light to the pale face. I know not whether the sun can have any chemic action upon the dead. But it seemed to me that a dream rose to the face of Sheumas, like one of those submarine flowers that are said to rise at times and be visible for a moment in the hollow of a wave. The dream, the light, waned; and there was a great stillness and white peace where the trouble had been. "It is the Smoothing of the Hand," said Alasdair McIan, in a hushed voice.

Often I had heard this lovely phrase in the Western Isles, but always as applied to sleep. When a fretful child suddenly falls into quietude and deep slumber, an isles-woman will say that it is because of the Smoothing of the Hand. It is always a profound sleep, and there are some who hold it almost as a sacred thing, and never to be disturbed.

So, thinking only of this, I whispered to my friend to come away; that Sheumas was dead weary with hunting upon the hills; that he would awake in due time.

McIan looked at me, hesitated, and said nothing. I saw him glance around. A few yards away, beside a great boulder in the heather, a small rowan stood, flickering its featherlike shadows across the white wool of a ewe resting underneath. He moved thitherward slowly, plucked a branch heavy with scarlet berries, and then, having returned, laid it across the breast of his kinsman.

I knew now what was that passing of the trouble in the face of Sheumas Dhu, what that sudden light was, that calming of the sea, that ineffable quietude. It was the Smoothing of the Hand.

SEANACHAS[14]

_THE SONG OF THE SWORD._

_THE FLIGHT OF THE CULDEES._

_MIRCATH._

_THE LAUGHTER OF SCATHACH THE QUEEN._

[14] The word "Seanachas" means either traditionary lore, or "telling of tales of the olden time"--and it is in this sense that it is used here.

THE SONG OF THE SWORD

These are of the Seanachas told me by Ian Cameron ("Ian Mòr"), before the flaming peats, at a hill-shealing, in a season when the premature snows found the bracken still golden and the ptarmigan with their autumn browns no more than flecked and mottled with gray.

He has himself now a quieter sleep than the sound of that falling snow, and it is three years since his face became as white and as cold.

He had pleasure in telling _sgeul_ after _sgeul_ of the ancient days. Far more readily at all times would he repeat stories of this dim past he loved so well than the more intimate tales which had his own pulse beating in them, as "The Daughter of the Sun" and others that I have given elsewhere. Often he would look up from where he held his face in his hands as he brooded into the dull steadfast flame that consumed the core of the peats; and without preamble, and with words in no apparent way linked to those last spoken, would narrate some brief episode, and always as one who had witnessed the event. Sometimes, indeed, these brief tales were like waves: one saw them rise, congregate, and expand in a dark billow--and the next moment there was a vanishing puff of spray and the billow had lapsed.

I cannot recall many of these fugitive tales--seanachas, as he spoke of them collectively, for each _sgeul_ was of the past, and had its roots in legendary lore--but of those that remained with me, here are four. All came upon me as birds flying in the dark: I knew not whence they came or upon what wind they had steered their mysterious course. They were there, that was all. Ancient things come again in Ian's brain: or recovered out of the dim days, and seen anew through the wonder-lens of his imagination.

* * * * *

It was in a white June, as they call it, in the third year after the pirates of Lochlin had fed the corbies of the Hebrid Isles, that the summer-sailors once more came down the Minch of Skye.

An east wind blew fresh from the mountains, though between dawn and sunrise it veered till it chilled itself upon the granite peaks of the Cuchullins, and then leaped north-westward with the white foam of its feet caught from behind by the sun-glint.

The vikings on board the _Svart-Alf_ laughed at that. The spray flew from the curved black prow of the great galley, and the wake danced in the dazzle--the sea-cream that they loved to see.

Tall men they were, and comely. Their locks of yellow or golden or ruddy hair, sometimes braided, sometimes all acurl like a chestnut-tree bud-breaking in April, sometimes tangled like sea-wrack caught in a whirl of wind and tide, streamed upon their shoulders. In their blue eyes was a shining as though there were torches of white flame behind them: and that shining was mild or fierce as home or blood filled their brain.

The _Svart-Alf_ was the storm-bird of a fleet of thirty galleys which had set forth from Lochlin under the raven-banner of Olaus the White. The vikings had joyed in a good faring. Singing south winds had blown them to the Faroe Isles, where from Magnus Cleft-Hand they had good cheer, and the hire of three men who knew the Western Isles and had been with the sea-kings who had harried them here and there again and again.

From Magnus-stead they went forth swelled with mead and ale and cow-beef: and they laughed because of what they would give in payment on their way back with golden torques and bracelets and other treasure, young slaves, women dark and fair, and the jewel-hilted weapons of the island-lords.