The Works of Fiona Macleod Part 15

I have a double memento of him that I value. In Islay he had bought or been given a little book of Gaelic songs (the Scoto-Gaelic must have puzzled him sorely, poor old _eirionnach_), and this he left behind him, and my minister friend gave it to me, with much of the above noted down on its end-pages. The little book had been printed early in the century, and was called _Ceilleirean Binn nan Creagan Aosda_, literally "Melodious Little Warblings from the Aged Rocks"; and it has always been dear to me because of one lovely phrase in it about birds, where the unknown Gaelic singer calls them "clann bheag' nam preas," the small clan of the bushes, equivalent in English to "the children of the bushes." This occurs in a lovely verse--

"Mu'n cuairt do bhruachaibh ard mo glinn, Biodh luba gheuga 's orra blath, 's clann bheag' nam preas a' tabhairst seinn Do chreagaibh aosd oran graidh."

("Along the lofty sides of my glen let there be bending boughs clad in blossom, and the children of the bushes making the aged rocks re-echo their songs of love")--truly a characteristic Gaelic wish, characteristically expressed.

And though this that I am about to say did not happen on Iona, I may tell it here, for it was there and from an islander I heard it, an old man herding among the troubled rocky pastures of Sguir Mr and Cnoc na Fhiona, in the south of that western part called Sliav Starr--one translation of which might be Wuthering Heights, for the word can be rendered wind-bl.u.s.tery or wind-noisy; though I fancy that _starr_ is, on Iona, commonly taken to mean a strong coa.r.s.e gra.s.s. (Fhiona here I take to be not the genitive of a name, nor that of "wine," but a mis-spelling of _fionna_, grain.)

When he was a boy he was in the island of Barra, he said, and he had a foster-brother called Iain Macneil. Iain was born with music in his mind, for though he was ever a poor creature as a man, having as a child eaten of the bird's heart, he could hear a power o' wonder in the wind.[4] He had never come to any good in a worldly sense, my old herdsman Micheil said; but it was not from want of cleverness only, but because "he had enough with his music." "Poor man, he failed in everything he did but that--and, sure, that was not against him, for _is ann air an traghadh a rugadh e_--wasn't he born when the tide was ebbing?" Besides, there was a mystery. Iain's father was said to be an Iona man, but that was only a politeness and a play upon words ("_The Holy Isle of the Western Sea_" could mean either Iona or the mystic Hy-Brasil, or Tir-na-thonn of the underworld); for he had no mortal father, but a man of the Smiling Distant People was his father. Iain's mother had loved her Leannan-shee, her fairy sweetheart, but that love is too strong for a woman to bear, and she died. Before Iain was born she lay under a bush of whitethorn, and her Leannan appeared to her. "I can't give you life," he said, "unless you'll come away with me." But she would not; for she wished the child to have Christian baptism.

"Well, good-bye," he said, "but you are a weak love. A woman should care more for her lover than her child. But I'll do this: I'll give the child the dew, an' he won't die, an' we'll take him away when we want him. An'

for a gift to him, you can have either beauty or music." "I don't want the dew," she said, "for I'd rather he lay below the gra.s.s beside me when his time comes: an' as for beauty, it's been my sorrow. But because I love the songs you have sung to me an' wooed me with, an' made me forget to hide my soul from you--an' it fallen as helpless as a broken wave on damp sand--let the child have the _binn-beul_ an' the _lamh clarsaireachd_ (the melodious mouth an' the harping hand)."

And truly enough Iain Macneil "went away." He went back to his own people. It must have been a grief to him not to lie under the gra.s.s beside his mother, but it was not for his helping. For days before he mysteriously disappeared he went about making a _ciucharan_ like a November wind, a singular plaintive moaning. When asked by his foster-brother Micheil why he was not content, he answered only "_Far am bi mo ghaol, bidh mo thathaich_" (Where my Love is, there must my returning be). He had for days, said Micheil, the mournful crying in the ear that is so often a presage of death or sorrow; and himself had said once "Tha 'n eabh a' m' chenais"--the cry is in my ear. When he went away, that going was the way of the snow.

It is no wonder that legends of Finn and Oisein, of Oscur and Gaul and Diarmid, of Cuchullin, and many of the old stories of the Gaelic chivalry survive in the isles. There, more than in Ireland, Gaelic has survived as the living speech, and though now in the Inner Hebrides it is dying before "an a' Beurla," the English tongue, and still more before the degraded "Bheurla leathan" or Glasgow-English of the lowland west, the old vernacular still holds an ancient treasure.

The last time I sailed to Staffa from Ulva, a dead calm set in, and we took a man from Gometra to help with an oar--his recommendation being that he was "cho laidir ri Cuchullin," as strong as Coohoolin. But neither in Iona nor in the northward isles nor in Skye itself, have I found or heard of much concerning the great Gaelic hero. Fionn and Oisn and Diarmid are the names oftenest heard, both in legend and proverbial allusion. An habitual mistake is made by writers who speak of the famous Cuchullin or Cuthullin mountains in Skye as having been named after Cuchullin; and though sometimes the local guides to summer tourists may speak of the Gaelic hero in connection with the mountains north of Coruisk, that is only because of hearsay. The Gaelic name should never be rendered as the Cuthullin or Cohoolin mountains, but as the Coolins.

The most obvious meaning of the name _Cuilfhion_ (Kyoolyun or Coolun), is "the fine corner," but, as has been suggested, the hills may have got their name because of the "cuillionn mara" or sea-holly, which is p.r.o.nounced _Ku' l'-unn_ or _coolin_. This is most probably the origin of the name.

In fine weather one may see from Iona the Coolins standing out in lovely blue against the northern sky-line, their contours the most beautiful feature in a view of surpa.s.sing beauty. How often I have watched them, have often dreamed of what they have seen, since Oisn pa.s.sed that way with Malvina: since Cuchullin learned the feats of war at Dun Scaaiah, from that great queen whose name, it is said, the island bears in remembrance of her; since Connlaoch, his son, set sail to meet so tragic a death in Ireland. There are two women of Gaelic antiquity who above all others have always held my imagination as with a spell: Scathach or Sgathaith (_sky-ah_), the sombre Amazonian queen of the mountain-island (then perhaps, as now, known also as the Isle of Mist), and Meave, the great queen of Connaught, whose name has its mountain bases in gigantic wars, and its summits among the wild poetry and romance of the Shee.

My earliest knowledge of the heroic cycle of Celtic mythology and history came to me, as a child, when I spent my first summer in Iona.

How well I remember a fantastic legend I was told: how that these far blue mountains, so freaked into a savage beauty, were due to the sword-play of Cuchullin. And this happened because the Queen o' Skye had put a spear through the two b.r.e.a.s.t.s of his love, so that he went in among her warrior women and slew every one, and severed the head of Sgayah herself, and threw it into Coruisk, where to this day it floats as Eilean Dubh, the dark isle. Thereafter, Cuchullin hewed the mountain-tops into great clefts, and trampled the hills into a craggy wilderness, and then rushed into the waves and fought with the sea-hordes till far away the bewildered and terrified stallions of the ocean dashed upon the rocks of Man and uttermost sh.o.r.es of Erin.

This magnificent mountain range can be seen better still from Lunga near Iona, whence it is a short sail with a southerly wind. In Lunga there is a hill called Cnoc Cruit or Dun Cruit, and thence one may see, as in a vast illuminated missal whose pages are of deep blue with bindings of azure and pale gold, innumerable green isles and peaks and hills of the hue of the wild plum. When last I was there it was a day of cloudless June. There was not a sound but the hum of the wild bee foraging in the long garths of white clover, and the continual sighing of a wave.

Listening, I thought I heard a harper playing in the hollow of the hill.

It may have been the bees heavy with the wine of honey, but I was content with my fancy and fell asleep, and dreamed that a harper came out of the hill, at first so small that he seemed like the green stalk of a lily and had hands like daisies, and then go great that I saw his breath darkening the waves far out on the Hebrid sea. He played, till I saw the stars fall in a ceaseless, dazzling rain upon Iona. A wind blew that rain away, and out of the wave that had been Iona I saw thousands upon thousands of white doves rise from the foam and fly down the four great highways of the wind. When I woke, there was no one near. Iona lay like an emerald under the wild-plum bloom of the Mull mountains. The bees stumbled through the clover; a heron stood silver-grey upon the grey-blue stone; the continual wave was, as before, as one wave, and with the same hushed sighing.

Two or three years ago I heard a boatman using a singular phrase, to the effect that a certain deed was as kindly a thought as that of the piper who played to St. Micheil in his grave. I had never heard of this before, or anything like it, nor have I since, on lip or in book. He told me that he spoke of a wandering piper known as Piobaire Raonull Dall, Blind Piper Ronald, who fifty years or so ago used to wander through the isles and West Highlands; and how he never failed to play a spring on his pipes, either to please or to console, or maybe to air a lament for what's lost now and can't come again, when on any holy day he stood before a figure of the Virgin (as he might well do in Barra or South Uist), or by old tombs or habitations of saints. My friend's father or one of his people, once, in the Kyles of Bute, when sailing past the little ruinous graveyard of Kilmichael on the Bute sh.o.r.e, had come upon Raonull-Dall, pacing slowly before the broken stones and the little cell which legend says is both the hermitage and the grave of St.

Micheil. When asked what he was playing and what for, in that lonely spot, he said it was an old ancient pibroch, the Gathering of the Clerics, which he was playing just to cheer the heart of the good man down below. When told that St. Micheil would be having his fill of good music where he was, the old man came away in the boat, and for long sat silent and strangely disheartened. I have more than once since then sailed to that little lonely ancient grave of Kilmichael in the Kyles of Bute, from Tignabruaich or further Cantyre, and have wished that I too could play a spring upon the pipes, for if so I would play to the kind heart of "Piobaire Raonull Dall."

Of all the saints of the west, from St. Molios or Molossius (Maol-Iosa?

the servant by Jesus?) who has left his name in the chief towns.h.i.+p in Arran, to St. Barr, who has given his to the largest of the Bishop's Isles, as the great Barra island-chain in the South Hebrides used to be called, there is none so commonly remembered and so frequently invoked as St. Micheil. There used to be no festival in the Western Isles so popular as that held on 29th September, "La' Fheill Mhicheil," the Day of the Festival of Michael; and the Eve of Michael's Day is still in a few places one of the gayest nights in the year, though no longer is every barn turned into a dancing place or a place of merry-making or, at least, a place for lovers to meet and give betrothal gifts. The day itself, in the Catholic Isles, was begun with a special Ma.s.s, and from hour to hour was filled with traditional duties and pleasures.

The whole of the St. Micheil ceremonies were of a remote origin, and some, as the ancient and almost inexplicable dances, and their archaic accompaniment of word and gesture far older than the sacrificial slaying of the Michaelmas Lamb. It is, however, not improbable that this latter rite was a survival of a pagan custom long anterior to the subst.i.tution of the Christian for the Druidic faith.

The "Iollach Mhicheil"--the triumphal song of Michael--is quite as much pagan as Christian. We have here, indeed, one of the most interesting and convincing instances of the trans.m.u.tation of a personal symbol. St.

Michael is on the surface a saint of extraordinary powers and the patron of the sh.o.r.es and the sh.o.r.e-folk: deeper, he is an angel, who is upon the sea what the angelical saint, St. George, is upon the land: deeper, he is a blending of the Roman Neptune and the Greek Poseidon: deeper, he is himself an ancient Celtic G.o.d: deeper, he is no other than Manannan, the G.o.d of ocean and all waters, in the Gaelic Pantheon: as, once more, Manannan himself is dimly revealed to us as still more ancient, more primitive, and even as supreme in remote G.o.dhead, the Father of an immortal Clan.

To this day Micheil is sometimes alluded to as the G.o.d Micheil, and I have seen some very strange Gaelic lines which run in effect:--

"It was well thou hadst the horse of the G.o.d Micheil Who goes without a bit in his mouth, So that thou couldst ride him through the fields of the air, And with him leap over the knowledge of Nature"--

presumably not very ancient as they stand, because of the use of "steud"

for horse, and "naduir" for nature, obvious adaptations from English and Latin. Certainly St. Michael has left his name in many places, from the sh.o.r.es of the Hebrides to the famous Mont St. Michel of Brittany, and I doubt not that everywhere an earlier folk, at the same places, called him Manannan. In a most unlikely place to find a record of old hymns and folk-songs, one of the volumes of Reports of the Highlands and Islands Commission, Mr. Carmichael many years ago contributed some of his unequalled store of Hebridean reminiscence and knowledge. Among these old things saved, there is none that is better worth saving than the beautiful Catholic hymn or invocation sung at the time of the midsummer migration to the hill-pastures. In this shealing-hymn the three powers who are invoked are St. Micheil (for he is a patron saint of horses and travel, as well as of the sea and seafarers), St. Columba, guardian of Cattle, and the Virgin Mary, "Mathair Uain ghil," "Mother of the White Lamb," as the tender Gaelic has it, who is so beautifully called the golden-haired Virgin Shepherdess.

It is pleasant to think of Columba, who loved animals, and whose care for his shepherd-people was always so great, as having become the patron saint of cattle. It is thus that the G.o.ds are shaped out of a little mortal clay, the great desire of the heart, and immortal dreams.

I may give the whole hymn in English, as rendered by Mr. Carmichael:

I

"Thou gentle Michael of the white steed, Who subdued the Dragon of blood, For love of G.o.d and the Son of Mary, Spread over us thy wing, s.h.i.+eld us all!

Spread over us thy wing, s.h.i.+eld us all!

II

"Mary beloved! Mother of the White Lamb, Protect us, thou Virgin of n.o.bleness, Queen of beauty! Shepherdess of the flocks!

Keep our cattle, surround us together, Keep our cattle, surround us together.

III

"Thou Columba, the friendly, the kind, In name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Through the Three-in-One, through the Three, Encompa.s.s us, guard our procession, Encompa.s.s us, guard our procession.

IV

"Thou Father! Thou Son! Thou Holy Spirit!

Be the Three-One with us day and night, On the machair plain, on the mountain ridge, The Three-one is with us, with His arm around our head, The Three-One is with us, with his arm around our head."

I have heard a paraphrase of this hymn, both in Gaelic and English, on Iona; and once, off Soa, a little island to the south of Icolmkill, took down a verse which I thought was local, but which I afterwards found (with very slight variance) in Mr. Carmichael's Governmental Uist-Record. It was sung by Barra fishermen, and ran in effect "O Father, Son, and Holy Ghost! O Holy Trinity, be with us day and night.

On the crested wave as on the mountain-side! Our Mother, Holy Mary Mother, has her arm under our head; our pillow is the arm of Mary, Mary the Holy Mother."

It is perhaps the saddest commentary that could be made on what we have lost that the children of those who were wont to go to rest, or upon any adventure, or to stand in the shadow of death, with some such words as

"My soul is with the Light on the mountains, Archangel Micheil s.h.i.+eld my soul!"

now go or stand in a scornful or heedless silence, or without remembrance, as others did who forgot to trim their lamps.

Who now would go up to the hill-pastures singing the Beannachadh Buachailleag, the Herding Blessing? With the pa.s.sing of the old language the old solemnity goes, and the old beauty, and the old patient, loving wonder. I do not like to think of what songs are likely to replace the Herding Blessing, whose first verse runs thus:

"I place this flock before me As ordained by the King of the World, Mary Virgin to keep them, to wait them, to watch them.

On hill and glen and plain, On hill, in glen, on plain."

In the maelstrom of the cities the old race perishes, drowns. How common the foolish utterance of narrow lives, that all these old ways of thought are superst.i.tious. To have a superst.i.tion is, for these, a worse ill than to have a shrunken soul. I do not believe in spells and charms and foolish incantations, but I think that ancient wisdom out of the simple and primitive heart of an older time is not an ill heritage; and if to believe in the power of the spirit is to be superst.i.tious, I am well content to be of the company that is now forsaken.

But even in what may more fairly be called superst.i.tious, have we surety that we have done well in our exchange?

A short while ago I was on the hillside above one of the much-frequented lochs in eastern Argyll. Something brought to my mind, as I went farther up into the clean solitudes, one of the verses of the Herding Blessing:

"From rocks, from snow-wreaths, from streams, From crooked ways, from destructive pits, From the arrows of the slim fairy women, From the heart of envy, the eye of evil, Keep us, Holy St. Bride."

"From the arrows of the slim fairy women." And I--do I believe in that?

At least it will be admitted that it is worth a belief; it is a pleasant dream; it is a gate into a lovely world; it is a secret garden, where are old sweet echoes; it has the rainbow-light of poetry. Is it not poetry? And I--oh yes, I believe it, that superst.i.tion: a thousand-fold more real is it, more believable, than that coa.r.s.e-tongued, ill-mannered, boorish people, desperate in slovenly pleasure. For that will stay, and they will go. And if I am wrong, then I will rather go with it than stay with them. And yet--surely, surely the day will come when this sordidness of life as it is so often revealed to us will sink into deep waters, and the stream become purified, and again by its banks be seen the slim fairy women of health and beauty and all n.o.ble and dignified things.

This is a far cry from Iona! And I had meant to write only of how I heard so recently as three or four summers ago a verse of the Uist Herding Chant. It was recited to me, over against Dun-I, by a friend who is a crofter in that part of Iona. It was not quite as Mr. Carmichael translates it, but near enough. The Rann Buachhailleag is, I should add, addressed to the cattle.

"The protection of G.o.d and Columba Encompa.s.s your going and coming, And about you be the milkmaid of the smooth white palms, Briget of the cl.u.s.tering hair, golden brown."