THE SHADOW-SEERS

“O green flame of life, pulse of the world.O Love! O Youth! O Dream of Dreams.”

“O bitter grief,” Molios cried, “O bitter grief, that I did not slay thee utterly on that day of the days! Flame to thy flesh, and a stake through thy belly—that is the doom thou shouldst have had! My ban upon thee, Cathal, that was a monk, and now art a wild man of the woods: upon thee, and thy Annir-Coille, and all thy brood, I put the ban of fear and dread and sorrow, a curse by day and a curse by night!”

But with that a great dizziness swam into the brain of the saint, and he fell forward, and lay his length upon the moss, and there was no sight to his eyes, or hearing to his ears, or knowledge upon him at all until the rising of the sun.

When the yellow light was upon his facehe rose. There was no face to see anywhere. Looking in the dew for the myriad feet that had been there, he saw none.

The old man knelt and prayed.

At the first praying God filled his heart with peace. At the second praying God filled his heart with wonder. At the third praying God whispered mysteriously, and he knew. Humble in his new knowledge, he rose. The tears were in his old eyes. He went up to the Hollow Oak, and blessed it, and the wild man that slept within it, and the Annir-Coille that Cathal loved, and the offspring of their love. He took the curse away, and he blessed all that God had made.

All the long weary way to the shore he went as one in a dream. Wonder and mystery were in his eyes.

At the shore he entered the little coracle that brought him daily from the Holy Isle, a triple arrow-flight seaward.

A child sat in it, playing with pebbles. It was Ardan, the son of Ardanna.

“Ardan mac Cathal,” began the saint, weary now, but glad with a strange new gladness.

“Who is Cathal?” said the boy.

“He that was thy father. Tell me, Ardan, hast thou ever seen aught moving in the woods—green lives out of the trees?”

“I have seen a green shine come out of the trees.”

Molios bowed his head.

“Thou shalt be as my son, Ardan; and when thou art a man thou shalt choose thy own way, and let no man hinder thee.”

That night Molios could not sleep. Hearing the loud wash of the sea, he went to the mouth of the cave. For a long while he watched the seals splashing in the silver radiance of the moonshine. Then he called them.

“O seals of the sea, come hither!”

At that all the furred swimmers drew near.

“Is it for the curse you give us every year of the years, O holy Molios?” moaned a great black seal.

“ORòn dubh, it is no curse I have for thee or thine, but a blessing, and peace. I have learned a wonder of God, because of an Annir-Coille in the forest that is upon thehill. But now I will be telling you the white story of Christ.”

So there, in the moonshine, with the flowing tide stealing from his feet to his knees, the old saint preached the gospel of love. The seals crouched upon the rocks, with their great brown eyes filled with glad tears.

When Molios ceased, each slipped again into the shadowy sea. All that night, while he brooded upon the mystery of Cathal and the Annir-Coille, with deep knowledge of hidden things, and a heart filled with the wonder and mystery of the world, he heard them splashing to and fro in the moon-dazzle, and calling, one to the other, “We, too, are the sons of God.”

At dawn a shadow came into the cave. A white frost grew upon the face of Molios. Still was he, and cold, when Ardan, the child, awoke. Only the white lips moved. A ray of the sun slanted across the sea, from the great disc of whirling golden flame new risen. It fell softly upon the moving lips. They were still then, and Ardan kissed them because of the smile that was there.

[7]These four short episodes are reprinted, by courteous consent of the Editor ofHarper’s Magazine, where they appeared, interpolated in “From the Hebrid Isles.”

THE “vision,” or second-sight, is more common in the Western Isles than in the Highlands; now at least, when all things sacred to the Celtic race, from the ancient language to the degenerate and indeed all but vanished Beltane and Samh’in rites, are smiled at by the gentle and mocked by the vulgar. A day will come when men will lament more what is irrecoverable than ever a nation mourned for lapsed dominion. It is a bitter cruel thing that strangers must rule the hearts and brains, as well as the poor fortunes, of the mountaineers and islanders.Yet in doing their best to thrust Celtic life and speech and thought into the sea, they are working a sore hurt for themselves that they shall discern in the day of adversity. We of the passing race know this thing: that in a day to come the sheep-runs shall not be in the Isles and the Highlands only—for we see the forests moving south, and there will be lack, then, not of deer and of sheep, but of hunters and shepherds.

That which follows is only a memento of what was told me last summer by a fisherman of Iona. If I were to write all I have heard about what is called second-sight, it would be a volume and not a few pages I should want. The “sight” has been a reality to me almost from the cradle, for my Highland nurse had the faculty, and I have the memory of more than one of her trances.

There is an old man on the island namedDaibhidh(David) Macarthur.[8]It was Ivor McLean, my boatman friend, who took meto him. He is a fine old man, though “heavy” a little; with years, perhaps, for his head is white as the crest of a wave. He is one of the very few of Iona, perhaps of the two or three at most, who do not speak any English.

[8]As there are several Macarthurs on Iona, I may say that the old man I allude to was not so named. Out of courtesy I disguise his name: though, since the above was written, he is no more.

“No,” he told me, “he had never had the sight himself. Ivor was wrong in saying that he had.”

This, I imagine, was shyness, or, rather, that innate reticence of the Celt in all profoundly intimate and spiritual matters; for, from what Ivor told me, I am convinced that old Macarthur had more than once proved himself a seer.

But he admitted that his wife had “it.”

We were seated on an old upturned boat on the rocky little promontory, where once were first laid the innumerable dead, brought for burial to the sacred soil of Iona. For a time Macarthur spoke slowly about this and that; then, abruptly and without preamble, he told me this:

The Christmas before last, Mary, his wife, had seen a man who was not on the island.“And that is true, by St. Martin’s Cross,” he added.

They were, he said, sitting before the fire, when, after a long silence, he looked up to see his wife staring into the shadow in the ingle. He thought she was brooding over the barren womb that had been her life-long sorrow, and now in her old age had become a strange and gnawing grief, and so he turned his gaze upon the red coals again.

But suddenly she exclaimed, “C’ait am bheil thu dol?” (Where are you going?)

He looked up, but saw no one in the room beside themselves.

“What has come to you?” he asked. “What do you see?”

But she took no notice.

“C’uine tha thu falbh?” (When are you going?) she muttered, with the same strained voice and frozen eyes. And then, once again, “C’uine thig thu rithisd?” (When will you come again?) And with that she bowed her head, and the thin backs of the hands upon her knees were wet with falling tears.

For the fourth of an hour thereafter shewould say nothing except moan, “Tha an amhuinn domhain; tha an amhuinn domhain; fuar, fuar; domhain, domhain!”[9](Deep, deep is the river; cold and deep; cold and deep!)

[9]Pronounce Ha aun ah-ween do’-inn; fēw-ar, fēw-ar; do’-inn, do’-inn.

And the man she saw, added Macarthur, was her nephew, Luthais, in Cape Breton, of Nova Scotia, who, as they learned before Easter, was drowned that Christmas-tide. He was the last of his mother’s race, and had been the foster-child of Mary.

IN September of last year I was ferried across the Sound of Kerrera by an old boatman.

That afternoon I went with my friend, a peasant farmer near the south end of Kerrera, and lay down in the grassy, bouldered wilderness beneath the cliff on which stands the ruin of Gylen Castle. The tide called in a loud insistent whisper, rising to a hoarse gurgle, from the Sound. The breeze that came from the mountains of Mull was honey-sweet with heather smell. The bleating of the ewes and lambs, the screaming of a few gulls,—nothing else was audible. At times, it is true, like a deep sigh, the suspiration of the open sea rose and fell among the islands. Faint echoes of that sigh came round Gylen headland and up the Kyle. It was an hour wherein to dream of the sons of Morven, who had landed here often, long before the ancientstronghold was built; of Fionn and the Féinn of the coming and going of Ossian in his blind old age; of beautiful Malvina; of the galleys of the Fomorians; of the songs and the singers and all the beautiful things of “the old ancient long ago.”

But the tale that I heard from my friend was this:

You know that my mother’s people are Skye folk. It was from the mother of my mother that I heard what you call the Incantation of the Spirit, though I never heard it called anything but old Elsie’sSian. She lived near the Hart o’ Corry. You know the part? Ay, true, it is wild land—wild even for the wilderness o’ Skye. Old mother Elsie had “the sight” at times, and whenever she wished she could find out the lines o’ life. It was magic, they say. Who am I to know? This is true, she knew much that no one else knew. When my mother’s cousin, Fergus MacEwan, who was mate of a sloop that sailed between Stornoway and Ardrossan, came to see her—and that was in the year before my mother was married, and when shewas courted by Fergus, though she was never for giving her life to him, for even then she loved my father, poor fisherman of Ulva though he was (though heir, through his father’s brother, to his crofter-farm on Kerrera here)—when Fergus came to see her, because of the gloom that was upon his spirit, she foretold all. At first she could “see” poorly. But one wild afternoon, when the Cuchullins were black with cloud-smoke, she bade him meet her in that lonely savage glen they call the Loat o’ Corry. He was loath to go, for he feared the place. But he went. He told all to my mother before he went away next dawn, with the heart in him broken, and his hope as dead as a herring in a net.

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 littenFrom 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 standethAt thy side and waitethDumb 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.

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 thatcaiodh, that wailing lamentation, sad as theCumha 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 theearth? 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 Irishkeenwill help the foreigner withKúë-yhorKúë-yhn. (2) TheCumha fir Arais(pronounceKŭv’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 shewished him farewell, and bade him come again when next theSunbeamshould 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 sawhim 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 abalachan, 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!”

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 ofBaille ’n Bad-a-sgailich, slept night and day.[11]

[11]Baille ’n Bad-a-sgailich: the Farm of the Shadowy Clump of Trees.Cairstine, orCairistine, is the Gaelic forChristian, asTormaidis for Norman, andGiorsalfor 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 nothingalmost, 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 wordclaarused 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 (myheart 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 aclaar.

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 drùghAm 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!

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 drùghAm 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!

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.

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 theDana 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, sisterof 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 isbelieved 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 thesunlit 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 saidnothing. 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.

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.

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 tellingsgeulaftersgeulof 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 thedull 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 eachsgeulwas 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 theSvart-Alflaughed 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.

TheSvart-Alfwas 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.

Cold black winds out of the north-east drove them straight upon the Ord of Sutherland. They sang with joy the noon when they rounded Cape Wrath and came under the shadow of the hills. The dawn that followed was red not only in the sky but on the sheen of the sword-blades. It was the Song of the Sword that day, and there is nosong like that for the flaming of the blood. The dark men of Torridon were caught unawares. For seven days thereafter the corbies and ravens glutted themselves drinking at red pools beside the stripped bodies which lay stark and stiff upon the heather. The firing of a score of homesteads smouldered till the rains came, a day and two nights after the old women who had been driven to the moors stole back wailing. The maids and wives were carried off in the galleys: and for nine days, at a haven in the lone coast opposite the Summer Isles, their tears, their laughter, their sullen anger, their wild gaiety, their passionate despair gave joy to the yellow-haired men. On the ninth day they were carried southward on the summer-sailing. At a place called Craig-Feeach, Raven’s Crag, in the north of Skye, where a Norse Erl had a great Dûn that he had taken from the son of a king from Eirèann whose sea-nest it had been, Olaus the White rested awhile. The women were left there as a free spoil: save three who were so fair that Olaus kept one, and Haco and Sweno his chief captains took the others.

Then, on an evening when the wind was from the north, Olaus and ten galleys went down the sound. Sweno the Hammerer was to strike across the west for the great island that is called Lewis: Haco the Laugher was to steer for the island that is called Harris: and Olaus himself was to reach the haven called Ljotr-wick in the Isle of the Thousand Waters that is Benbecula.

On the eve of the day following that sailing a wild wind sprang up, blowing straight against the north. All of the south-faring galleys save one made for haven, though it was a savage coast which lay along the south of Skye. In the darkness of the storm Olaus thought that the other nine wave-steeds were following him, and he drove before the gale, with his men crouching under the lee of the bulwarks, and with Finnleikr the Harper singing a wild song of sea-foam and flowing blood and the whirling of swords.

The gale was nigh spent three hours after dawn: but the green seas were like snow-crowned hillocks that roll in earth-drunkenness when the flames surge from blazing mountains. Olaus knew that no boat couldlive in that sea, except it went before the wind. So, though not a galley was in sight, he fared steadily westward.

By sundown the wind had swung out of the south into the east: and by midnight the stars were shining clear. In the blue-dark could be seen the white wings of the fulmars, seaward-drifting once again from the rocks whither they had fled.

Then came the dawn when the sun-rain streamed gladly, and a fresh east wind blew across the Minch, and theSvart-Alf, that had been driven far northward, came leaping south-westwardly, with laughter and fierce shining of sky-blue eyes, where the vikings toiled at the oars, or burnished their brine-stained swords and javelins.

All day they fared joyously thus. Behind them they could see the blue line of the mainland and the dark-blue mountain-crests of Skye: southward was a long green film, where Coll caught the waves ere they drove upon Tiree; south-eastward, the gray-blue peaks of Halival and Haskival rose out of the Isle of Terror, as Rùm was then called. Before them, as far as they could see tonorth or south, the purple-gray lines that rose out of the west were the contours of the Hebrides.

“Dost thou see yonder blue splatch, Morna?” cried Olaus the White to the woman who lay indolently by his side, and watched the sun-gold redden the mass of ruddy hair which she had sprayed upon the boards, a net wherein to mesh the eyes of the vikings, “do you see that blue splatch? I know what it is. It is the headland that Olaf the Furious called Skipness. Behind it is a long fjord in two forks. At the end of the south fork is a place of the white-robes whom the islanders call Culdees. Midway on the eastern bend of the north fork is a town of a hundred families. Over both rules Maoliosa, a warrior-priest, and under him, at the town, is a graybeard called Rumun mac Coag. All this I have learned from Anlaf the Swarthy, who came with us out of Faroe.”

Morna glanced at him under her drooped eyelids. Sure, he was fair to see, for all that his long hair was white. White it had gone with the terror of a night on an ice-floe,whereon a man who hated the young erl had set him adrift with seven wolves. He had slain three, and drowned three, and one had leaped into the sea: and then he had lain on the ice, with snow for a pillow, and in the dawn his hair was the same as the snow. This was but ten years ago, when he was a youth.

She looked at him, and when she spoke it was in the slow lazy speech that in his ears was drowsy-sweet as the hum of the hives in the steading where his home was.

“It will be a red sleep the men of that town will be having soon, I am thinking, Olaus. And the women will not be carding wool when the moon rises to-morrow night. And ...”

The fair woman stopped suddenly. Olaus saw her eyes darken.

“Olaus!”

“I listen.”

“If there is a woman there that you desire more than me I will give her a gift.”

Olaus laughed.

“Keep your knife in your girdle Morna. Who knows but you may need it soon to save yourself from a Culdee!”

“Bah. These white-robed men-women have nought to do with us. I fear no man, Olaus: but I have a blade for the woman who will dazzle your eyes.”

“Have no fear, white wolf. The sea-wolf knows his mate when he has found her!”

An hour after sun-setting a mist came up. The wind freshened. Olaus made silence throughout the war-galley. The vikings had muffled their oars, for the noise of the waves on the shore could now be heard. Hour after hour went by. When, at last, the moonlight tore a rift in the häar, and suddenly the vapour was licked up by a wind moving out of the north, they saw that they were close upon the land, and right eastward of the headland of Skipness.

Anlaf the Swarthy went to the prow. Blackly he loomed in the moonlight as he stood there, poising his long spear, and sounding the depths while the vessel slowly forged shoreward. By the time a haven was found, and the vikings stood silent upon the rocks, the night was yellow with moonshine, and the brown earth overlaid with a softwhite sheen wherein the long shadows lay palely blue.

There was deep peace in the island-town. The kye were in the sea-pastures near, and even the dogs slept. There had been no ill for long, and Rumun mac Coag was an old man, and dreamed overmuch about his soul. This was because of the teaching of the Culdees. Before he had known he had a soul he was a man, and would not have been taken unawares—and he over-lord of a sea-town likeBail’-tiorail.

Olaus the White made a wide circuit with his men. Then, slowly, the circle narrowed.

A bull lowed, where it stood among the sea-grass, stamping uneasily, and ever and again sniffing the air. Suddenly one heifer, then another, then all the kye, began a strange lowing. The dogs rose, with bristling felts, and crawled sidelong, snarling, with red eyes gleaming savagely.

Bethoc, the young third wife of Rumun, was awake, dreaming of a man out of Eirèann who had that day given her a strange pleasure with his harp and his dusky eyes. She knew that lowing. It was thelanganaich anaghaidh am allamharach, the continued lowing against the stranger. She rose lightly, and unfastened the leather flap, and looked down from thegriananwhere she was. A man stood there in the shadow. She thought it was the harper. With a low sigh she leaned downward to kiss him, and to whisper a word in his ear.

Her long hair fell over her eyes and face and blinded her. She felt it grasped, and put out her hand. It was seized, and before she knew what was come upon her she was dragged prone upon the man.

Then, in a flash, she saw he had yellow hair, and was clad as a Norseman. She gasped. If the sea-rovers were come, it was death for all there. The man whispered something in a tongue that was strange to her. She understood better when he put his arm about her, and placed a hand upon her mouth.

Bethoc stood silent. Why did no one hear that lowing of the kine, that snarling of the dogs which had now grown into a loud continuous baying? The man by her side thought she was cowed, or had accepted the change of fate. He left her, and puthis foot in a cleft. Then, sword under his chin, he began to climb stealthily.

He had thrown his spear upon the ground. Soundlessly Bethoc stepped forward, lifted it, and moved forward like a shadow.

A wild cry rang through the night. There was a gurgling and spurting sound as of dammed water adrip. Rumun sprang from his couch, and stared out of the aperture. Beneath he saw a man, speared through the back, and pinned to the soft wood. His hands claspt the frayed deer-skins, and his head lay upon his shoulder. He was laughing horribly. A bubbling of foam frothed continuously out of his mouth.

The next moment Rumun saw Bethoc. He had not time to call to her before a man slipped out of the shadow, and plunged a sword through her till the point dripped red drops upon the grass beyond where she stood. She gave no cry, but fell as a gannet falls. A black shadow darted across the gloom. A crash, a scream, and Rumun sank inert, with an arrow fixed midway in his head through the brows.

Then there was a fierce tumult everywhere.From the pastures the kye ran lowing and bellowing, in a wild stampede. The neighing of horses broke into screams. Here and there red flames burst forth, and leapt from hut to hut. Soon the whole rath was aflame. Round the dûn of Rumun a wall of swords flashed.

All had taken refuge in the dûn, all who had escaped the first slaying. If any leaped forth, it was upon a viking spear, or if the face of any was seen it was the targe for a swift-sure arrow.

A long penetrating wail went up. The Culdees, on the further loch, heard it, and ran from their cells. The loud laughter of the sea-rovers was more dreadful to them than the whirling flames and the wild screaming lament of the dying and the doomed.

None came forth alive out of that dûn, save three men, and seven women that were young. Two of the men were made to tell all that Olaus the White wanted to know. Then they were blinded, and put in a boat, and set in the tide-eddy that would take them to where the Culdees were. And, for the Culdees, they had a message from Olaus.

Of the seven women none was so fair that Morna had any heed. But seven men had them as spoil. Their wild keening had died away into a silence of blank despair long before the dawn. When the light came, they were huddled in a white group near the ashes of their homes. Everywhere the dead sprawled.

At sunrise the vikings held an ale-feast. When Olaus the White had drunken and eaten, he left his men and went down to the shore to look upon the fortified place where Maoliosa the Culdee and his white-robes lived. As he fared thither through what had beenBail’-tiorailthere was not a male left alive save the one prisoner who had been kept, Aongas the Bow-maker as he was called: none save Aongas, and a strayed child among the salt grasses near the shore, a little boy, naked and with blue eyes and laughing sunny smile.

ON the wane of noon, on the day following the ruin ofBail’-tiorail, sails were descried far east of Skipness.

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

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

They were soon to know.

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

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

“Well,” said Olaus the White, grimly, “well: how did the Raven fly?”

“When Haco laughed for the last time, with waving sword out of the death wherein he sank, there was only one galley left. Of all that company of vikings there were no more than nine to tell the tale. These nine we took out of their boat, which was below waves soon. Haco and his men are all fighting the sea-shadows by now.”

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

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

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

Olaus laughed.

“Aye, but the running shall be after the birlinns, Sweno.”

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

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

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

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

“She is in the sea.”

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

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

“She was a woman, Sweno—and none more fair in the isles, after Morna that is mine.”

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

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

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

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

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

Slowly across the loch the birlinn, filled with white-robed Culdees, drew near. At the prow stood a tall old man, with streaming hair and beard, white as sea-foam. In his right hand he grasped a great Cross, whereon was Christ crucified.

The vikings drew close one to the other.

“Hail them in their own tongue, Sweno,” said Olaus.

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

“Ho, there, priests of the Christ-faith!”

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

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

“To win you and yours to God, pagan.”

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

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

Truly the old monk was mad. He had told his Culdees that God would prevail, and that the pagans would melt away before the Cross.

The ebb-tide was running swift. Even while Sweno spoke, the birlinn touched a low sea-hidden ledge of rock.

A cry of consternation went up from the white-robes. Loud laughter came from the vikings.

“Arrows!” cried Olaus.

With that three score men took their bows. There was a hail of death-shafts. Many fell into the water, but some were in the brains and hearts of the Culdees.

Maoliosa himself stood in death, transfixed to the mast.

With a wild cry the monks swept their oars backward. Then they leaped to their feet and changed their place, and rowed for life or death.

The summer-sailors sprang into their galley. Sweno the Hammerer was at the bow. The foam curled and hissed.

The birlinn grided upon the opposite shore at the selfsame moment when Sweno brought down his battle-axe upon the monk who steered. The man was cleft to the shoulder. Sweno swayed with the blow, stumbled, and fell headlong into the sea. A Culdee thrust at him with an oar, and pinned him among the sea-tangle. Thus died Sweno the Hammerer.

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

“Let forty men follow,” he cried.

Like white birds, the monks fled this way and that. Olaus and those who watchedlaughed at them as they stumbled because of their robes. One by one fell, sword-cleft or spear-thrust. The moorland was red.

At the last there were less than a score—twelve only—ten!

“Bring them back!” Olaus shouted.

When the ten fugitives were captured and brought back, Olaus took the crucifix that Maoliosa had raised, and held it before each in turn. “Smite,” he said to the first monk. But the man would not. “Smite!” he said to the second: but he would not. And so it was to the tenth.

“Good,” said Olaus the White: “they shall witness to their god.” With that he bade his vikings break up the birlinn, and drive the planks into the ground, and shore them up with logs.

When this was done he crucified each Culdee. With nails and with ropes he did unto each what their god had suffered. Then all were left there, by the water-side.

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

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