FOOTNOTES

O, she will have the deep dark heart, for all her face is fair,As deep and dark as though beneath the shadow of her hair:For in her hair a spirit dwells that no white spirit is,And hell is in the hopeless heaven of that lost spirit’s kiss.She has two men within the palm, the hollow of her hand:She takes their souls and blows them forth as idle drifted sand:And one falls back upon her breast that is his quiet home,And one goes out into the night and is as wind-blown foam.And when she sees the sleep of one, ofttimes she rises thereAnd looks into the outer dark and calleth soft and fair:And then the lost soul that afar within the dark doth roamComes laughing, laughing, laughing, and cryingHome! Home!And is there any home for him, whose portion is the night?And is there any peace for him whose doom is endless flight?O wild sad bird, O wind-spent bird, O bird upon the wave,There is no home for thee, wild bird, but in the cold sea-grave!

O, she will have the deep dark heart, for all her face is fair,

As deep and dark as though beneath the shadow of her hair:

For in her hair a spirit dwells that no white spirit is,

And hell is in the hopeless heaven of that lost spirit’s kiss.

She has two men within the palm, the hollow of her hand:She takes their souls and blows them forth as idle drifted sand:And one falls back upon her breast that is his quiet home,And one goes out into the night and is as wind-blown foam.

She has two men within the palm, the hollow of her hand:

She takes their souls and blows them forth as idle drifted sand:

And one falls back upon her breast that is his quiet home,

And one goes out into the night and is as wind-blown foam.

And when she sees the sleep of one, ofttimes she rises thereAnd looks into the outer dark and calleth soft and fair:And then the lost soul that afar within the dark doth roamComes laughing, laughing, laughing, and cryingHome! Home!

And when she sees the sleep of one, ofttimes she rises there

And looks into the outer dark and calleth soft and fair:

And then the lost soul that afar within the dark doth roam

Comes laughing, laughing, laughing, and cryingHome! Home!

And is there any home for him, whose portion is the night?And is there any peace for him whose doom is endless flight?O wild sad bird, O wind-spent bird, O bird upon the wave,There is no home for thee, wild bird, but in the cold sea-grave!

And is there any home for him, whose portion is the night?

And is there any peace for him whose doom is endless flight?

O wild sad bird, O wind-spent bird, O bird upon the wave,

There is no home for thee, wild bird, but in the cold sea-grave!

Sheumas leaned against the tiller of theLuath, and looked at Isla. He saw a shadow on his face. With his right foot the man tapped against a loose spar that was on the starboard deck.

When the singer ceased, Isla raised his arm and shook menacingly his clenched fist, over across the water to where theBrudhearglay.

There were words on his lips, but they died away when Neil Macalpine broke into a love song, “Mo nighean donn.”

“Can you be telling me, Isla,” said Sheumas, “who was the man that made that song about the homeless man?”

“Ian Mòr.”

“Ian Mòr of the Hills?”

“Ay.”

“They say he had the shadow upon him?”

“Well, what then?”

“Was it because of love?”

“It was because of love.”

“Did the woman love him?”

“Ay.”

“Did she go to him?”

“No.”

“Was that why he had the mind-dark?”

“Ay.”

“But he loved her, and she loved him?”

“He loved her, and she loved him.”

For a time Sheumas kept silence. Then he spoke again.

“She was the wife of another man?”

“Ay; she was the wife of another man.”

“Didhelove her?”

“Yes, for sure.”

“Didshelovehim?”

“Yes … yes.”

“Whom, then, did she love? For a woman can love one man only.”

“She loved both.”

“That is not a possible thing: not the one deep love. It is a lie, Isla Macleod.”

“Yes, it is a lie, Sheumas Maclean.”

“Which man did she love?”

Isla slowly shook the ash from his pipe, and looked for a second or two at a momentary quiver in the sky in the north-east.

“The dawn will be here soon now, Sheumas.”

“Ay. I was asking you, Isla, which man did she love?”

“Sure she loved the man who gave her the ring.”

“Which man did she love?”

“O for sure, man, you’re asking me just like the lawyer who has the trials away at Balliemore on the mainland yonder.”

“Well, I’ll tell you that thing myself, Isla Macleod, if you’ll tell me the name of the woman.”

“I am not for knowing the name.”

“Was it Mary … or Jessie … or mayhap was it Silis, now?”

“I am not for knowing the name.”

“Well, well, it might be Silis, then?”

“Ay, for sure it might be Silis. As well Silis as any other.”

“And what would the name of the other man be?”

“What man?”

“The man whose ring she wore?”

“I am not remembering that name.”

“Well, now, would it be Padruic, or mayhap Ivor, or … or … perhaps, now, Sheumas?”

“Ay, it might be that.”

“Sheumas?”

“Ay, as well that as any other.”

“And what was the end?”

“The end o’ what?”

“The end of that loving?”

Isla Macleod gave a low laugh. Then he stooped to pick up the pipe he had dropped. Suddenly he rose without touching it. He put his heel on the warm clay, and crushed it.

“That is the end of that kind of loving,” he said. He laughed low again as he said that.

Sheumas leaned and picked up the trodden fragments.

“They’re warm still, Macleod.”

“Are they?” Isla cried at that, his eyeswith a red light coming into the blue: “then they will go where the man in the song went, the man who sought his home for ever and ever and never came any nearer than into the shine of the window-lamps.”

With that he threw the pieces into the dark water that was already growing ashy-grey.

“’Tis a sure cure, that, Sheumas Maclean.”

“Ay, so they say, … and so, so: ay, as you were saying, Ian Mòr went into the shadow because of that home he could not win?”

“So they say. And now we’ll take the nets. ’Tis a heavy net that comes out black, as the sayin’ is. They’re heavy for sure, after this still night, an’ the wind southerly, an’ the pollack this way an’ that.”

“Well, now, that’s strange.”

“What is strange, Sheumas Maclean?”

“That you should say that thing.”

“And for why that?”

“Oh, just this. Silis had a dream the other night, she had. She dreamed she saw you standing alone on theLuath: and you were hauling hard a heavy net, so that the sweat ran down your face. And your face wasdead-white pale, she said. An’ you hauled an’ you hauled. An’ someone beside you that she couldn’t see laughed an’ laughed: an’ …”

With a stifled oath, Isla broke in upon the speaker’s words:

“Why, man alive, you said he, the man, myself it is, was alone on theLuath.”

“Well, Silis saw no one but yourself, Isla Macleod.”

“But she heard some one beside me laughing an’ laughing.”

“So she said. And you were dead-white, she said: with the sweat pouring down you. An’ you pulled an’ you pulled. Then you looked up at her and said: ‘It’s a heavy net that comes up black, as the sayin’ is.’”

Isla Macleod made no answer to that, but slowly began to haul at the nets. A swift moving light slid hither and thither well away to the north-east. The sea greyed. A new, poignant, salt smell came up from the waves. Sail after sail of the smacks ceased to be a blur in the dark: each lifted a brown shadowy wing against a dusk through which a flood of myriad drops of light steadily oozed.

Now from this boat, now from that, hoarse cries resounded.

TheMairi Banswung slowly round before the faint dawn-wind, and lifted her bow homeward with a little slapping splash. TheMaggie, theTrilleachan, theEilid, theJessie, and theMairi Donnfollowed one by one.

In silence the two men on theLuathhauled in their nets. The herring made a sheet of shifting silver as they lay in the hold. As the dawn lightened, the quivering silver mass sparkled. The decks were mailed with glittering scales: these, too, gleamed upon the legs, arms, and hands of the two fishermen.

“Well, that’s done!” exclaimed Sheumas at last. “Up with the helm, Isla, and let us make for home.”

TheLuathforged ahead rapidly when once the sail had its bellyful of wind. She passed theTern, then theJessie Macalpine, caught up the big, lumberingMaggie, and went rippling and rushing along the wake of theEilid, the lightest of the Inchghunnais boats.

Off shore, the steamerOspreymet the smacks, and took the herring away, cran bycran. Long before her screw made a yeast of foam athwart the black-green inshore water, theLuathwas in the little haven and had her nose in the shingle at Craigard point.

In silence Sheumas and Isla walked by the rock-path to the isolated cottage where the Macleans lived. The swallows were flitting hither and thither in front of its low, whitewashed wall, like flying shuttles against a silent loom. The pale gold of a rainy dawn lit the whiteness with a vivid gleam. Suddenly Isla stopped.

“Will you be telling me now, Sheumas, which man it was that she loved?”

Maclean did not look at the speaker, though he stopped too. He stared at the white cottage, and at the little square window with the geranium-pot on the lintel.

But while he hesitated, Isla Macleod turned away, and walked swiftly across the wet bracken and bog-myrtle till he disappeared over Cnoc-na-Hurich, on the hidden slope of which his own cottage stood amid a wilderness of whins.

Sheumas watched him till he was out of sight. It was then only that he answered the question.

“I’m thinking,” he muttered slowly, “I’m thinking she loved Ian Mòr.”

“Yes,” he muttered again later, as he took off his sea-soaked clothes, and lay down on the bed in the kitchen, whence he could see into the little room where Silis was in a profound sleep: “Yes, I’m thinking she loved Ian Mòr.”

He did not sleep at all, for all his weariness.

When the sunlight streamed in across the red sandstone floor, and crept towards his wife’s bed, he rose softly and looked at her. He did not need to stoop when he entered the room, as Isla Macleod would have had to do.

He looked at Silis a long time. Her shadowy hair was all about her face. She had never seemed to him more beautiful. Well was she called “Silis the Fawn” in the poem that some one had made about her.

The poem that some one had made about her? … yes, for sure, how could he be forgetting who it was. Was it not Isla, and he a poet too, another Ian Mòr they said.

“Another Ian Mòr.” As he repeated the words below his breath, he bent over his wife.Her white breast rose and fell, the way a moonbeam does in moving water.

Then he knelt. When he took the slim white hand in his she did not wake. It closed lovingly upon his own.

A smile slowly came and went upon the dreaming face—ah, lovely, white, dreaming face, with the hidden starry eyes. There was a soft flush, and a parting of the lips. The half-covered bosom rose and fell as with some groundswell from the beating heart.

“Silis,” he whispered. “Silis…Silis…”

She smiled. He leaned close above her lips.

“Ah, heart o’ me,” she whispered, “O Isla, Isla, mo rùn, moghray, Isla, Isla, Isla!”

Sheumas drew back. He too was like the man in her dream, for it was dead-white he was, with the sweat in great beads upon his face.

He made no noise as he went back to the hearthside, and took his wet clothes from where he had hung them before the smoored peats, and put them on again.

Then he went out.

It was a long walk to Isla Macleod’s cottage that few-score yards: a long, long walk.

When Sheumas stood on the wet grass round the flagstones he saw that the door was ajar. Isla had not lain down. He had taken his ash-lute, and was alternately playing and singing low to himself.

Maclean went close up to the wall, and listened. At first he could hear no more than snatches of songs.

And is there any home for him whose portion is the night?…

And one goes out into the night and is as wind-blown foam …

O heart that is breaking,Breaking, breaking,O for the home that I canna, canna win:O the weary aching,The weary, weary achingTo be in the home that I canna, canna win!

O heart that is breaking,

Breaking, breaking,

O for the home that I canna, canna win:

O the weary aching,

The weary, weary aching

To be in the home that I canna, canna win!

Then suddenly the man within put down his ash-lute, and stirred. In a loud vibrant voice he sang:

O far away upon the hills at the lighting of the dawnI saw a stirring in the fern and out there leapt a fawn:And O my heart was up at that and like a wind it blewTill its shadow hovered o’er the fawn as ’mid the fern it flew.AndSilis! Silis! Silis!was the wind-song on the hill,AndSilis! Silis! Silis!did the echoing corries fill:My hunting heart was glad indeed, at the lighting of the dawn,For O it was the hunting then of my bonnie, bonnie Fawn!

O far away upon the hills at the lighting of the dawn

I saw a stirring in the fern and out there leapt a fawn:

And O my heart was up at that and like a wind it blew

Till its shadow hovered o’er the fawn as ’mid the fern it flew.

AndSilis! Silis! Silis!was the wind-song on the hill,

AndSilis! Silis! Silis!did the echoing corries fill:

My hunting heart was glad indeed, at the lighting of the dawn,

For O it was the hunting then of my bonnie, bonnie Fawn!

For some moments there was dead silence. Then a heavy sigh came from within the cottage.

Sheumas Maclean at last made a step forward. But before his shadow fell across the doorway Isla had breathed a few melancholy notes from hisfeadan, and then began a slow wailing song.

O heart that is breaking,Breaking, breaking,O for the home that I canna, canna win:O the weary aching,The weary, weary achingTo be in the home that I canna, canna win!For O the long home-sickness,The long, long home-sickness!’Tis slow, slow death for me who long for home, for home!And a heart is breaking,I know a heart that’s breaking,All to be at home at last, to be at home, at home,O Silis, Silis,Home, Home, Home!

O heart that is breaking,Breaking, breaking,O for the home that I canna, canna win:O the weary aching,The weary, weary achingTo be in the home that I canna, canna win!

O heart that is breaking,

Breaking, breaking,

O for the home that I canna, canna win:

O the weary aching,

The weary, weary aching

To be in the home that I canna, canna win!

For O the long home-sickness,The long, long home-sickness!’Tis slow, slow death for me who long for home, for home!And a heart is breaking,I know a heart that’s breaking,All to be at home at last, to be at home, at home,O Silis, Silis,Home, Home, Home!

For O the long home-sickness,

The long, long home-sickness!

’Tis slow, slow death for me who long for home, for home!

And a heart is breaking,

I know a heart that’s breaking,

All to be at home at last, to be at home, at home,

O Silis, Silis,

Home, Home, Home!

Sheumas’ face was white and tired. It is weary work with the herring, no doubt.

He lifted a white stone and rapped loudly on the door. Isla came out, and looked at him. The singer smiled, though that smiling had no light in it. It was dark as a dark wave it was.

“Well?” he said.

“May I come in?”

“Come in, and welcome. And what will you be wanting, Sheumas Maclean?”

“Sure, it’s too late to sleep, an’ I’m thinking I would like to hear now that story you were to tell me.”

The man gave no answer to that. Each looked at the other with luminous unwinking eyes.

“It will not be a fair thing,” said Isla slowly, at last. “It will not be a fair thing: for I am bigger and stronger.”

“There is another way, Isla Macleod.”

“Ay?”

“That you or I go to her, and tell her all, and then at the last say: ‘Come with me, or stay with him.’”

“So be it.”

So there and then they drew for chance. The gaining of that hazard was with Sheumas Maclean.

Without a word Isla turned and went into the house. There he took hisfeadan, and played low to himself, staring into the red heart of the smouldering peats. He neither smiled nor frowned; but only once he smiled, and that was when Sheumas came back, and saidCome.

So the two walked in silence across the dewy grass. There was a loud calling of skuas and terns, and the raucous laughing cry of the great herring-gull, upon the weedy shore of Craigard. The tide bubbled and oozed through the wilderness of wrack. Farther off there were the cackling of hens, the lowing of restless kye, and the bleating of the sheep on the slopes of Melmonach. A shrewd salt air tingled in the nostrils of the two men.

At the closed door Sheumas made a sign of silence. Then he unfastened the latch, and entered.

“Silis,” he said in a low voice, but clear.

“Silis, I’ve come back again. Dry your tears, my lass, and tell me once again—forI’m dying to hear the blessed truth once again—tell me once again if it’s me you love best, or Isla Macleod.”

“I have told you, Sheumas.”

Without, Isla heard her words and drew closer.

“And it is a true thing that you love me best, and that since the choice between him and me has come, you choose me?”

“It is a true thing.”

A shadow fell across the room. Isla Macleod stood in the doorway.

Silis turned the white beautiful face of her, and looked at the man she loved with all her heart and all her soul. He smiled. She was no coward, his Silis, though he called her his fawn.

“Is—it—a—true—thing, Silis?” he asked slowly.

She looked at Sheumas, then at Isla, then back at her husband.

“It might kill Sheumas,” she muttered below her breath, so that neither heard her: “it might kill him,” she repeated.

Then, with a swift turn of her eyes, she spoke.

“Yes, it is a true thing, Isla. I abide by Sheumas.”

That was all.

She was conscious of the wave of relief that went into Sheumas’ face. She saw the rising of a dark, strange tide in the eyes of Isla.

He stared at her. Perhaps he did not hear? Perhaps he was dreaming still? He was a dreamer, a poet: perhaps he could not understand.

It was a little while wherein to kill a man.

“My Fawn,” he whispered hoarsely, “my wee Fawn!”

But Silis was frozen.

The deadly frost in her eyes slew the dream that the brain of the poet dreamed.

Then it slew the poet.

Isla, the man, stood awhile, strangely tremulous. She could see his nerves quivering below his clothes. He was a big, strong giant of a lover: but he trembled now just like a bit fawn, she thought. His blue eyes were suddenly grown cloudy and dim. Then the deadly frost slew the brain that was thealtar where the poet offered up his dreams of beauty.

And that is how Isla the dreamer ceased to dream.

He was quite white and still when they found him three days later. He seemed a giant of a man as he lay, face upward, among the green flags by the water-edge. The chill starlight of three nights had got into the quiet of his face.

That night, resumed Coll McColl, after a long pause—that night he, Coll, was walking in the moonlight across the hither slope of Melmonach.

He stood under a rowan-tree, and watched a fawn leaping wildly through the fern. While he watched, amazed, he saw a tall shadowy woman pass by. She stopped, and drew a great bow she carried, and shot an arrow. It went through the air with a sharp whistling sound—just likeSilis—Silis—Silis, Coll said, to give me an idea of it.

The arrow went right through the fawn.

But here was a strange thing. The fawn leapt away sobbing into the night: while itsheart suspended, arrow-pierced, from the white stem of a silver birch.

“And to this day,” said Coll at the last, “I am not for knowing who that archer was, or who that fawn. You think it was these two who loved? Well, ’tis Himself knows. But I have this thought of my thinking: that it was only a vision I saw, and that the fawn was the poor suffering heart of Love, and that the Archer was the great Shadowy Archer that hunts among the stars. For in the dark of the morrow after that night I was on Cnoc-na-Hurich, and I saw a woman there shooting arrow after arrow against the stars. At dawn she rose and passed away, like smoke, beyond those pale wandering fires.”

FOOTNOTESThree doves carrying leaves[1]Marsail nic Ailpean is the Gaelic of which an English translation would be Marjory MacAlpine.Nicis a contraction fornighean mhic, “daughter of the line of.”[2]Baille-’na-aonar’sa mhonadh, “the solitary farm on the hill-slope.”[3]“Thy love to me was wonderful, surpassing the love of women.”[4]“I shall worship thee, ay even after I have become old.”[5]Contullich:i.e.Ceann-nan-tulaich, “the end of the hillocks.”Loch-a-chaoruinnmeans the loch of the rowan-trees.[6]The farm in the hollow of the yellow flowers.[7](1)A chuid do Pharas da!“His share of heaven be his.” (2)Gu’n gleidheadh Dia thu, “May God preserve you.” (3)Gu’n beannaicheadh Dia an tigh!“God’s blessing on this house.”[8](1)Droch caoidh ort!“May a fatal accident happen to you” (lit.“bad moan on you”). (2)Gaoth gun direadh ort!“May you drift to your drowning” (lit.“wind without direction on you”). (3)Dia ad aghaidh, etc., “God against thee and in thy face … and may a death of woe be yours … Evil and sorrow to thee and thine!”[9]i.e.With a criminal secret, or an undiscovered crime.[10]Ivor, of course, gave these words in the Gaelic, the sound of which has the sweet wail of the sea in it.[11]The Iona fishermen, and, indeed, the Gaelic and Scottish fishermen generally, believe that the pollack (porpoise) knows when it is the Sabbath, and on that day will come closer to the land, and be more wanton in its gambols on the sun-warmed surface of the sea, than on the days when the herring-boats are abroad.

Three doves carrying leaves

[1]Marsail nic Ailpean is the Gaelic of which an English translation would be Marjory MacAlpine.Nicis a contraction fornighean mhic, “daughter of the line of.”

[2]Baille-’na-aonar’sa mhonadh, “the solitary farm on the hill-slope.”

[3]“Thy love to me was wonderful, surpassing the love of women.”

[4]“I shall worship thee, ay even after I have become old.”

[5]Contullich:i.e.Ceann-nan-tulaich, “the end of the hillocks.”Loch-a-chaoruinnmeans the loch of the rowan-trees.

[6]The farm in the hollow of the yellow flowers.

[7](1)A chuid do Pharas da!“His share of heaven be his.” (2)Gu’n gleidheadh Dia thu, “May God preserve you.” (3)Gu’n beannaicheadh Dia an tigh!“God’s blessing on this house.”

[8](1)Droch caoidh ort!“May a fatal accident happen to you” (lit.“bad moan on you”). (2)Gaoth gun direadh ort!“May you drift to your drowning” (lit.“wind without direction on you”). (3)Dia ad aghaidh, etc., “God against thee and in thy face … and may a death of woe be yours … Evil and sorrow to thee and thine!”

[9]i.e.With a criminal secret, or an undiscovered crime.

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

[11]The Iona fishermen, and, indeed, the Gaelic and Scottish fishermen generally, believe that the pollack (porpoise) knows when it is the Sabbath, and on that day will come closer to the land, and be more wanton in its gambols on the sun-warmed surface of the sea, than on the days when the herring-boats are abroad.

RE-ISSUE OFMiss Fiona Macleod’s StoriesRearranged, and with Additional TalesVOL. I.SPIRITUAL TALESContentsSt Bride of the Isles.The Three Marvels of Iona.The Melancholy of Ulad.Ula and Urla.The Dark Nameless One.The Smoothing of the Hand.The Anointed Man.The Hills of Ruel.The Fisher of Men.The Last Supper.The Awakening of Angus Ogue.VOL II.BARBARIC TALESContentsThe Song of the Sword.The Flight of the Culdees.Mircath.The Laughter of the Queen.The Harping of Cravetheen.Ahez the Pale.Silk o’ the Kine.Cathal of the Woods.The Washer of the Ford.VOL III.TRAGIC ROMANCESContentsMorag of the Glen.The Dàn-nan-Ròn.The Sin-Eater.The Ninth Wave.The Judgment o’ God.Green Branches.The Archer.

RE-ISSUE OFMiss Fiona Macleod’s StoriesRearranged, and with Additional Tales

VOL. I.

SPIRITUAL TALES

Contents

VOL II.

BARBARIC TALES

Contents

VOL III.

TRAGIC ROMANCES

Contents

BY FIONA MACLEOD.

PHARAIS: A Romance of the Isles.THE MOUNTAIN LOVERS.THE SIN-EATER: and other Tales.THE WASHER OF THE FORD.GREEN FIRE: A Romance.FROM THE HILLS OF DREAM: Mountain Songs and Island Runes.

“Not beauty alone, but that element of strangeness in beauty which Mr Pater rightly discerned as the inmost spirit of romantic art—it is this which gives to Miss Macleod’s work its peculiar æsthetic charm. But apart from and beyond all those qualities which one calls artistic, there is a poignant human cry, as of a voice with tears in it, speaking from out a gloaming which never lightens to day, which will compel and hold the hearing of many who to the claims of art as such are wholly or largely unresponsive.” (James Ashcroft Noble, inThe New Age.)

“Of the products of what has been called the Celtic Renascence, ‘The Sin-Eater’and its companion Stories seem to us the most remarkable. They are of imagination and a certain terrible beauty all compact.” (From an article inThe Daily Chronicleon “The Gaelic Glamour.”)

“For sheer originality, other qualities apart, her tales are as remarkable, perhaps, as anything we have had of the kind since Mr Kipling appeared … Their local colour, their idiom, their whole method, combine to produce an effect which may be unaccustomed, but is therefore the more irresistible. They provide as original an entertainment as we are likely to find in this lingering century, and they suggest a new romance among the potential things of the century to come.” (The Academy.)

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