Part 7

“It is Eachainn Gilleasbuig I am to ourselves; and the English of that for those who have no Gaelic is Hector Gillespie; and I am Eachainn mac Ian mac Alasdair of Strathsheean that is where Sutherland lies against Ross.”

“Then take this thing--and that is, the curse of the Sin-Eater! And a bitter bad thing may it be upon you and yours.”

And with that Neil the Sin-Eater flung his hand up into the air, and then leaped past the shepherd, and a minute later was running through the frightened sheep, with his head low, and a white foam on his lips, and his eyes red with blood as a seal’s that has the death-wound on it.

* * * * *

On the third day of the seventh month from that day, Aulay Macneill, coming into Balliemore of Iona from the west side of the island, said to old Ronald MacCormick, that was the father of his wife, that he had seen Neil Ross again, and that he was “absent”--for though he had spoken to him, Neil would not answer, but only gloomed at him from the wet weedy rock where he sat.

The going back of the man had loosed every tongue that was in Iona. When, too, it was known that he was wrought in some terrible way, if not actually mad, the islanders whispered that it was because of the sins of Adam Blair. Seldom or never now did they speak of him by his name, but simply as “The Sin-Eater.” The thing was not so rare as to cause this strangeness, nor did many (and perhaps none did) think that the sins of the dead ever might or could abide with the living who had merely done a good Christian charitable thing. But there was a reason.

Not long after Neil Ross had come again to Iona, and had settled down in the ruined roofless house on the croft of Ballyrona, just like a fox or a wild-cat, as the saying was, he was given fishing-work to do by Aulay Macneill, who lived at Ard-an-teine, at the rocky north end of the _machar_ or plain that is on the west Atlantic coast of the island.

One moonlit night, either the seventh or the ninth after the earthing of Adam Blair at his own place in the Ross, Aulay Macneill saw Neil Ross steal out of the shadow of Ballyrona and make for the sea. Macneill was there by the rocks, mending a lobster-creel. He had gone there because of the sadness. Well, when he saw the Sin-Eater, he watched.

Neil crept from rock to rock till he reached the last fang that churns the sea into yeast when the tide sucks the land just opposite.

Then he called out something that Aulay Macneill could not catch. With that he springs up, and throws his arms above him.

“Then,” says Aulay when he tells the tale, “it was like a ghost he was. The moonshine was on his face like the curl o’ a wave. White! there is no whiteness like that of the human face. It was whiter than the foam about the skerry it was; whiter than the moon shining; whiter than … well, as white as the painted letters on the black boards of the fishing-cobles. There he stood, for all that the sea was about him, the slip-slop waves leapin’ wild, and the tide making, too, at that. He was shaking like a sail two points off the wind. It was then that, all of a sudden, he called in a womany, screamin’ voice--

“‘I am throwing the sins of Adam Blair into the midst of ye, white dogs o’ the sea! Drown them, tear them, drag them away out into the black deeps! Ay, ay, ay, ye dancin’ wild waves, this is the third time I am doing it, and now there is none left; no, not a sin, not a sin!

“‘O-hi, O-ri, dark tide o’ the sea, I am giving the sins of a dead man to thee! By the Stones, by the Wind, by the Fire, by the Tree, From the dead man’s sins set me free, set me free! Adam mhic Anndra mhic Adam and me, Set us free! Set us free!’

“Ay, sure, the Sin-Eater sang that over and over; and after the third singing he swung his arms and screamed--

“‘And listen to me, black waters an’ running tide, That rune is the good rune told me by Maisie the wise, And I am Neil the son of Silis Macallum By the black-hearted evil man Murtagh Ross, That was the friend of Adam mac Anndra, God against him!’

“And with that he scrambled and fell into the sea. But, as I am Aulay mac Luais and no other, he was up in a moment, an’ swimmin’ like a seal, and then over the rocks again, an’ away back to that lonely roofless place once more, laughing wild at times, an’ muttering an’ whispering.”

It was this tale of Aulay Macneill’s that stood between Neil Ross and the isle-folk. There was something behind all that, they whispered one to another.

So it was always the Sin-Eater he was called at last. None sought him. The few children who came upon him now and again fled at his approach, or at the very sight of him. Only Aulay Macneill saw him at times, and had word of him.

After a month had gone by, all knew that the Sin-Eater was wrought to madness because of this awful thing: the burden of Adam Blair’s sins would not go from him! Night and day he could hear them laughing low, it was said.

But it was the quiet madness. He went to and fro like a shadow in the grass, and almost as soundless as that, and as voiceless. More and more the name of him grew as a terror. There were few folk on that wild west coast of Iona, and these few avoided him when the word ran that he had knowledge of strange things, and converse, too, with the secrets of the sea.

One day Aulay Macneill, in his boat, but dumb with amaze and terror for him, saw him at high tide swimming on a long rolling wave right into the hollow of the Spouting Cave. In the memory of man, no one had done this and escaped one of three things: a snatching away into oblivion, a strangled death, or madness. The islanders know that there swims into the cave, at full tide, a Mar-Tarbh, a dreadful creature of the sea that some call a kelpie; only it is not a kelpie, which is like a woman, but rather is a sea-bull, offspring of the cattle that are never seen. Ill indeed for any sheep or goat, ay, or even dog or child, if any happens to be leaning over the edge of the Spouting Cave when the Mar-tarbh roars: for, of a surety, it will fall in and straightway be devoured.

With awe and trembling Aulay listened for the screaming of the doomed man. It was full tide, and the sea-beast would be there.

The minutes passed, and no sign. Only the hollow booming of the sea, as it moved like a baffled blind giant round the cavern-bases: only the rush and spray of the water flung up the narrow shaft high into the windy air above the cliff it penetrates.

At last he saw what looked like a mass of sea-weed swirled out on the surge. It was the Sin-Eater. With a leap, Aulay was at his oars. The boat swung through the sea. Just before Neil Ross was about to sink for the second time, he caught him and dragged him into the boat.

But then, as ever after, nothing was to be got out of the Sin-Eater save a single saying: _Tha e lamhan fuar: Tha e lamhan fuar!_--“It has a cold, cold hand!”

The telling of this and other tales left none free upon the island to look upon the “scapegoat” save as one accursed.

It was in the third month that a new phase of his madness came upon Neil Ross.

The horror of the sea and the passion for the sea came over him at the same happening. Oftentimes he would race along the shore, screaming wild names to it, now hot with hate and loathing, now as the pleading of a man with the woman of his love. And strange chants to it, too, were upon his lips. Old, old lines of forgotten runes were overheard by Aulay Macneill, and not Aulay only: lines wherein the ancient sea-name of the island, _Ioua_, that was given to it long before it was called Iona, or any other of the nine names that are said to belong to it, occurred again and again.

The flowing tide it was that wrought him thus. At the ebb he would wander across the weedy slabs or among the rocks: silent, and more like a lost duinshee than a man.

Then again after three months a change in his madness came. None knew what it was, though Aulay said that the man moaned and moaned because of the awful burden he bore. No drowning seas for the sins that could not be washed away, no grave for the live sins that would be quick till the day of the Judgment!

For weeks thereafter he disappeared. As to where he was, it is not for the knowing.

Then at last came that third day of the seventh month when, as I have said, Aulay Macneill told old Ronald MacCormick that he had seen the Sin-Eater again.

It was only a half-truth that he told, though. For, after he had seen Neil Ross upon the rock, he had followed him when he rose, and wandered back to the roofless place which he haunted now as of yore. Less wretched a shelter now it was, because of the summer that was come, though a cold, wet summer at that.

“Is that you, Neil Ross?” he had asked, as he peered into the shadows among the ruins of the house.

“That’s not my name,” said the Sin-Eater; and he seemed as strange then and there, as though he were a castaway from a foreign ship.

“And what will it be, then, you that are my friend, and sure knowing me as Aulay mac Luais--Aulay Macneill that never grudges you bit or sup?”

“_I am Judas._”

* * * * *

“And at that word,” says Aulay Macneill, when he tells the tale, “at that word the pulse in my heart was like a bat in a shut room. But after a bit I took up the talk.

“‘Indeed,’ I said; ‘and I was not for knowing that. May I be so bold as to ask whose son, and of what place?’

“But all he said to me was, ‘_I am Judas._’

“Well, I said, to comfort him, ‘Sure, it’s not such a bad name in itself, though I am knowing some which have a more home-like sound.’ But no, it was no good.

“‘I am Judas. And because I sold the Son of God for five pieces of silver …’

“But here I interrupted him and said,--‘Sure, now, Neil--I mean, Judas--it was eight times five.’ Yet the simpleness of his sorrow prevailed, and I listened with the wet in my eyes.

“‘I am Judas. And because I sold the Son of God for five silver shillings, He laid upon me all the nameless black sins of the world. And that is why I am bearing them till the Day of Days.’”

* * * * *

And this was the end of the Sin-Eater; for I will not tell the long story of Aulay Macneill, that gets longer and longer every winter: but only the unchanging close of it.

I will tell it in the words of Aulay.

* * * * *

“A bitter, wild day it was, that day I saw him to see him no more. It was late. The sea was red with the flamin’ light that burned up the air betwixt Iona and all that is west of West. I was on the shore, looking at the sea. The big green waves came in like the chariots in the Holy Book. Well, it was on the black shoulder of one of them, just short of the ton o’ foam that swept above it, that I saw a spar surgin’ by.

“‘What is that?’ I said to myself. And the reason of my wondering was this: I saw that a smaller spar was swung across it. And while I was watching that thing another great billow came in with a roar, and hurled the double spar back, and not so far from me but I might have gripped it. But who would have gripped that thing if he were for seeing what I saw?

“It is Himself knows that what I say is a true thing.

“On that spar was Neil Ross, the Sin-Eater. Naked he was as the day he was born. And he was lashed, too--ay, sure, he was lashed to it by ropes round and round his legs and his waist and his left arm. It was the Cross he was on. I saw that thing with the fear upon me. Ah, poor drifting wreck that he was! _Judas on the Cross_: It was his _eric_!

“But even as I watched, shaking in my limbs, I saw that there was life in him still. The lips were moving, and his right arm was ever for swinging this way and that. ’Twas like an oar, working him off a lee shore: ay, that was what I thought.

“Then, all at once, he caught sight of me. Well he knew me, poor man, that has his share of heaven now, I am thinking!

“He waved, and called, but the hearing could not be, because of a big surge o’ water that came tumbling down upon him. In the stroke of an oar he was swept close by the rocks where I was standing. In that flounderin’, seethin’ whirlpool I saw the white face of him for a moment, an’ as he went out on the re-surge like a hauled net, I heard these words fallin’ against my ears,--

“‘_An eirig m’anama_ … In ransom for my soul!’

“And with that I saw the double-spar turn over and slide down the back-sweep of a drowning big wave. Ay, sure, it went out to the deep sea swift enough then. It was in the big eddy that rushes between Skerry-Mòr and Skerry-Beag. I did not see it again--no, not for the quarter of an hour, I am thinking. Then I saw just the whirling top of it rising out of the flying yeast of a great, black-blustering wave, that was rushing northward before the current that is called the Black-Eddy.

“With that you have the end of Neil Ross: ay, sure, him that was called the Sin-Eater. And that is a true thing; and may God save us the sorrow of sorrows.

“And that is all.”

_THE NINTH WAVE_

THE NINTH WAVE

The wind fell as we crossed the Sound. There was only one oar in the boat, and we lay idly adrift. The tide was still on the ebb, and so we made way for Soa; though, well before the island could be reached, the tide would turn, and the sea-wind would stir, and we be up the Sound and at Balliemore again almost as quick as the laying of a net.

As we--and by “us” I am meaning Phadric Macrae and Ivor McLean, fishermen of Iona, and myself beside Ivor at the helm--as we slid slowly past the ragged islet known as Eilean-na-h’ Aon-Chaorach, torn and rent by the tides and surges of a thousand years, I saw a school of seals basking in the sun. One by one slithered into the water, and I could note the dark forms, like moving patches of sea-weed, drifting in the green underglooms.

Then, after a time, we bore down upon Sgeir-na-Oir, a barren rock. Three great cormorants stood watching us. Their necks shone in the sunlight like snakes mailed in blue and green. On the upper ledges were eight or ten northern-divers. They did not seem to see us, though I knew that their fierce light-blue eyes noted every motion we made. The small sea-ducks bobbed up and down, first one flirt of a little black-feathered rump, then another, then a third, till a score or so were under water, and half-a-hundred more were ready at a moment’s notice to follow suit. A skua hopped among the sputtering weed, and screamed disconsolately at intervals. Among the myriad colonies of close-set mussels, which gave a blue bloom like that of the sloe to the weed-covered boulders, a few kittiwakes and dotterels flitted to and fro. High overhead, white against the blue as a cloudlet, a gannet hung motionless, seemingly frozen to the sky.

Below the lapse of the boat the water was pale green. I could see the liath and saith fanning their fins in slow flight, and sometimes a little scurrying cloud of tiny flukies and inch-long codling. For two or three fathoms beyond the boat the waters were blue. If blueness can be alive and have its own life and movement, it must be happy on these western seas, where it dreams into shadowy Lethes of amethyst and deep, dark oblivions of violet.

Suddenly a streak of silver ran for a moment along the sea to starboard. It was like an arrow of moonlight shot along the surface of the blue and gold. Almost immediately afterward, a stertorous sigh was audible. A black knife cut the flow of the water: the shoulder of a pollack.

“The mackerel are coming in from the sea,” said Macrae. He leaned forward, wet the palm of his hand, and held it seaward. “Ay, the tide has turned----”

_“Ohrone--achree--an--Srùth-màra!_ _Ohrone--achree--an--Lionadh!”_

he droned monotonously, over and over, with few variations.

“An’ it’s Oh an’ Oh for the tides o’ the sea, An’ it’s Oh for the flowing tide,”

I sang at last in mockery.

“Come, Phadric,” I cried, “you are as bad as Peter McAlpin’s lassie, Fiona, with the pipes!”

Both men laughed lightly. On the last Sabbath, old McAlpin had held a prayer-meeting in his little house in the “street,” in Balliemore of Iona. At the end of his discourse he told his hearers that the voice of God was terrible only to the evil-doer, but beautiful to the righteous man, and that this voice was even now among them, speaking in a thousand ways, and yet in one way. And at this moment, that elfin granddaughter of his, who was in the byre close by, let go upon the pipes with so long and weary a whine that the collies by the fire whimpered, and would have howled outright but for the Word of God that still lay open on the big stool in front of old Peter. For it was in this way that the dogs knew when the Sabbath readings were over, and there was not one that would dare to bark or howl, much less rise and go out, till the Book was closed with a loud, solemn bang. Well, again and again that weary quavering moan went up and down the room, till even old McAlpin smiled, though he was fair angry with Fiona. But he made the sign of silence, and began: “My brethren, even in this trial it may be the Almighty has a message for us----,” when at that moment Fiona was kicked by a cow, and fell against the board with the pipes, and squeezed out so wild a wail that McAlpin started up and cried, in the Lowland way that he had won out of his wife, “_Hoots, havers, an’ a’! come oot o’ that, ye deil’s spunkie!_”

So it was this memory that made Phadric and Ivor smile. Suddenly Ivor began, with a long rising and falling cadence, an old Gaelic rune of the Faring of the Tide:

_“Athair, A mhic, A Spioraid Naoimh,_ _Biodh an Tri-aon leinn, a la’s a dh’ oidhche;_ _S’ air chul nan tonn, no air thaobh nam beann!”_

“O Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Be the Three-in-One with us day and night, On the crested wave, when waves run high!”

And out of the place in the West Where Tir-nan-Òg, the Land of Youth Is, the Land of Youth everlasting, Send the great tide that carries the sea-weed And brings the birds, out of the North: And bid it wind as a snake through the bracken, As a great snake through the heather of the sea, The fair blooming heather of the sunlit sea. And may it bring the fish to our nets, And the great fish to our lines: And may it sweep away the sea-hounds That devour the herring: And may it drown the heavy pollack That respect not our nets But fall into and tear them and ruin them wholly.

And may I, or any that is of my blood, Behold not the Wave-Haunter who comes in with the Tide; Or the Maighdeann-màra who broods in the shallows, Where the sea-caves are, in the ebb: And fair may my fishing be, and the fishing of those near to me, And good may this Tide be, and good may it bring: And may there be no calling in the Flow, this Srùth-màra, And may there be no burden in the Ebb! _ochone!_

_An ainm an Athar, s’ an Mhic, s’ an Spioraid Naoimh,_ _Biodh an Tri-aon leinn, a la’s a dh’ oidhche,_ _S’ air chul nan tonn, no air thaobh nam beann!_ _Ochone! arone!_

Both men sang the closing lines, with loudly swelling voices, and with a wailing fervour which no words of mine could convey.

Runes of this kind prevail all over the isles, from the Butt of Lewis to the Rhinns of Islay: identical in spirit, though varying in lines and phrases, according to the mood and temperament of the _rannaiche_ or singer, the local or peculiar physiognomy of nature, the instinctive yielding to hereditary wonder-words, and other compelling circumstances of the outer and inner life. Almost needless to say, the sea-maid or sea-witch and the Wave-Haunter occur in many of those wild runes, particularly in those that are impromptu. In the Outer Hebrides, the runes are wild natural hymns rather than Pagan chants: though marked distinctions prevail there also,--for in Harris and the Lews the folk are Protestant almost to a man, while in Benbecula and the Southern Hebrides the Catholics are in a like ascendancy. But all are at one in the common Brotherhood of Sorrow.

The only lines in Ivor McLean’s wailing song which puzzled me were the two last which came before “the good words,” “in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit,” etc.

“Tell me, in English, Ivor,” I said, after a silence, wherein I pondered the Gaelic words, “what is the meaning of

“‘And may there be no calling in the Flow, this Srùth-màra, And may there be no burden in the Ebb’?”

“Yes, I will be telling you what is the meaning of that. When the great tide that wells out of the hollow of the sea, and sweeps towards all the coasts of the world, first stirs, when she will be knowing that the Ebb is not any more moving at all, she sends out nine long waves. And I will be forgetting what these waves are: but one will be to shepherd the sea-weed that is for the blessing of man; and another is for to wake the fish that sleep in the deeps; and another is for this, and another will be for that; and the seventh is to rouse the Wave-Haunter and all the creatures of the water that fear and hate man; and the eighth no man knows, though the priests say it is to carry the Whisper of Mary; and the ninth----”

“And the ninth, Ivor?”

“May it be far from us, from you and from me, and from those of us. An’ I will be sayin’ nothing against it, not I; nor against anything that is in the sea. An’ you will be noting that!

“Well, this ninth wave goes through the water on the forehead of the tide. An’ wherever it will be going it _calls_. An’ the call of it is--‘_Come away, come away, the sea waits! Follow!… Come away, come away, the sea waits! Follow!_’[10] An’ whoever hears that must arise and go, whether he be fish or pollack, or seal or otter, or great skua or small tern, or bird or beast of the shore, or bird or beast of the sea, or whether it be man or woman or child, or any of the others.”

[10] Ivor, of course, gave these words in the Gaelic, the sound of which has the sweet wail of the sea in it.

“_Any of the others_, Ivor?”

“I will not be saying anything about that,” replied McLean gravely; “you will be knowing well what I mean, and if you do not it is not for me to talk of that which is not to be talked about.

“Well, as I was for saying, that calling of the ninth wave of the Tide is what Ian Mòr of the hills speaks of as ‘the whisper of the snow that falls on the hair, the whisper of the frost that lies on the cold face of him that will never be waking again.’”

“_Death?_”

“It is _you_ that will be saying it.”

“Well,” he resumed, after a moment’s hush, “a man may live by the sea for five-score years and never hear that ninth wave call in any _Srùth-màra_; but soon or late he will hear it. An’ many is the Flood that will be silent for all of us; but there will be one Flood for each of us that will be a dreadful Voice, a voice of terror and of dreadfulness. And whoever hears that voice, he for sure will be the burden in the Ebb.”

“Has any heard that Voice, and lived?”

McLean looked at me, but said nothing. Phadric Macrae rose, tautened a rope, and made a sign to me to put the helm a-lee. Then, looking into the green water slipping by--for the tide was feeling our keel, and a stronger breath from the sea lay against the hollow that was growing in the sail--he said to Ivor:

“You should be telling her of Ivor MacIvor Mhic Niall.”

“Who was Ivor MacNeill?” I said.

“He was the father of my mother,” answered McLean, “and was known throughout the north isles as Ivor Carminish: for he had a farm on the eastern lands of Carminish which lie between the hills called Strondeval and Rondeval, that are in the far south of the Northern Hebrides, and near what will be known to you as the Obb of Harris.