IN PREPARATION 
 
 THE IMMORTAL HOUR: a Drama in Verse. 
 With Poems and Threnodies. 
 
 THE MAGIC KINGDOMS : Being the Little 
 Book of the Great Enchantment. 
 
 DROSTAN AND YSSUL: A Drama. 
 
 TWILIGHT SAGAS. [A Volume of Short 
 Stories.] 
 
 THE LAMP OF PSYCHE. [Third Series of 
 Studies in the Spiritual History of the 
 Gael.] 
 
The Winged Destiny 
 
'Theseus . . . Wilt thou speak of the ancient trouble 
 of thy race ? ' (Edipus at Kolonos. 
 
 ' For immaterial things, which are the highest and 
 greatest, are shown only in thought and idea, and in 
 no other way, and aU that we are saying is said for 
 the sake of them.'' PLATO, The Statesman. 
 
THE WINGED DESTINY 
 
 STUDIES IN THE SPIRITUAL 
 HISTORY OF THE GAEL 
 
 BY FIONA MACLEOD 
 
 I EDITION 
 
 or THf 
 
 UNIVERSITY j 
 
 LONDON 
 
 CHAPMAN AND HALL, LTD. 
 1905 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 DEDICATORY INTRODUCTION .... vii 
 THE SUNSET OF OLD TALES 
 
 THE SUNSET OF OLD TALES 1 
 
 THE TREUD NAN RON 9 
 
 THE MAN ON THE MOOR 16 
 
 THE WOMAN AT THE CROSS-WAYS . . . . 26 
 
 THE LORDS OF WISDOM ..... 36 
 
 THE WAYFARER 44 
 
 QUEENS OF BEAUTY 66 
 
 ORPHEUS AND OISIN 74 
 
 CHILDREN OF WATER- 
 CHILDREN OF WATER ...... 89 
 
 CUILIDH MHOIRE .98 
 
 SEA-MAGIC ... .... 107 
 
 FARA-GHAOL H7 
 
 SORROW ON THE WIND 123 
 
 THE LYNN OF DREAMS ...... 134 
 
 MAYA 141 
 
 V 
 
FOR THE BEAUTY OF AN IDEA- 
 PART I 
 
 For the Beauty of an Idea 
 
 PAGE 
 
 PRELUDE 153 
 
 CELTIC 167 
 
 THE GAELIC HEART 187 
 
 PART II 
 Anima Celtica 
 
 THE GAEL AND HIS HERITAGE .... 207 
 
 SEUMAS : A MEMORY 247 
 
 AILEEN: A MEMORY 251 
 
 THE FOUR WINDS OF EIRINN 255 
 
 'THE SHADOWY WATERS' 294 
 
 A TRIAD 317 
 
 THE ANCIENT BEAUTY . . . . . . 327 
 
 THE WINGED DESTINY . 341 
 
 VI 
 
TO 
 
 J. A. G. 
 
 To you, dear friend, let me dedicate this bindweed of 
 thoughts and dreams, which had their life by the grey 
 shores you, also, love. Have you not wandered there 
 often, seeking forgetfulness, and, wandering, found 
 peace ? 
 
 You are in your southern home, by calm waters 
 where mine are foam-white, and under blue skies 
 where mine are dark with cloud and wind : and yet, 
 of all I know, few do so habitually dwell in that 
 fragrant, forgetting and forgot, old world of ours, 
 whose fading voice is more and more lost in the 
 northern seas. The South is beautiful, but has not 
 the secrets of the North. Do you, too, not hold lona, 
 motherland of all my dreams, as something rare and 
 apart, one who has her own lovely solitude and her 
 own solitary loveliness that is like no other loveliness ? 
 In your heart, as in mine, it lies an island of revelation 
 and of peace. For you, too, is the enduring spell of 
 
 vii 
 
those haunted lands where the last dreams of the 
 Gael are gathered, dwelling in sunset beauty. 
 
 In this book I have dealt as, I hope, in all I 
 write only with things among which my thought 
 has moved, searching, remembering, examining, some- 
 times dreaming. Slightly to adapt a comment I read 
 somewhere recently : while it is true that certain 
 ideas monopolise my imagination, I do not wilfully 
 ignore the lesser nor even the ignoble things of life ; 
 above all, I do not dishonestly seek to seem unaware 
 of or to hide them. It is only that I have no time 
 to attend to them, being otherwise busy. 
 
 I think the fundamental idea of this book, as of all 
 my thought in these things from which the book has 
 risen like a phantom out of haunted woods, is utter- 
 able in the noble phrase of Renan : ' J'avais le 
 sentiment de 1'infini et de Teternel, et de la mes 
 sourires pour les choses qui passent. Mais TEsprit ne 
 passe point. 1 Nor am I so much concerned to set 
 others right, for which I am not qualified, as to inter- 
 pret, for which I may be : remembering as I do 
 Goethe's words, ' If you call a bad thing bad, you do 
 little ; if you call a good thing good, you do much." 1 
 To each his interest. I shall rest content if I am of 
 the horizon-makers, however humbly ; if I may be 
 among those who extend the horizons. 
 
 You who know the way of the wind in my mind 
 know that I do not, as some say, ' dwell only in the 
 past, 1 or that personal sorrow is the one magnet of my 
 
 viii 
 
dreams. It is not the night-wind in sad hearts only 
 that I hear, or the sighing of vain futilities ; but, 
 often, rather an emotion akin to that mysterious 
 Sorrow of Eternity in love with tears, of which Blake 
 speaks in Vala. It is, at times at least I feel it so, 
 because Beauty is more beautiful there. It is the 
 twilight hour in the heart, as Joy is the heart's 
 morning. Perhaps I love best the music that leads 
 one into the moonlit coverts of dreams, and old silence, 
 and unawaking peace. But Music, like the rose of 
 the Greeks, is ' the thirty petalled one,' and every leaf 
 is the gate of an equal excellence. The fragrance of 
 all is Joy, the beauty of all is Sorrow : but the Rose 
 is one Rosa Sempiterna^ the Rose of Life. As to 
 the past, it is because of what is there, that I look 
 back : not because I do not see what is here to-day, 
 or may be here to-morrow. It is because of what is 
 to be gained that I look back ; of what is supremely 
 worth knowing there, of knowing intimately : of what 
 is supremely worth remembering, of remembering con- 
 stantly : not only as an exile dreaming of the land 
 left behind, but as one travelling in narrow defiles 
 who looks back for familiar fires on the hills, or 
 upward to the familiar stars where is surety. In 
 truth, is not all creative art remembrance : is not the 
 very spirit of ideal art the recapture of what has gone 
 away from the world, that by an imperious spiritual 
 law is for ever withdrawing, to come again newly ? 
 You wrote to me once, ' Beware of the beauty that 
 ix 
 
you seek. 1 You would have me bow down only before 
 the beauty that is beyond the last careful words of 
 ivory and pale gold, beyond even the airs of the 
 enchanted valleys where Music is. 
 
 And, to-day, with a wind of the south coming across 
 glad water, and greenness uplifting itself from the 
 grass to the foam of leaves on swaying elms, I realise 
 in truth how small is the measure of beauty that any 
 can give, saying ' I have gathered this/ Yonder 
 yellow butterfly hovering over the grass-hid nest of 
 the shrew-mouse ... I think of it as a living flower 
 of the sun, earth- wafted, wondering at the creature of 
 the sod : but how poor that is compared with the 
 excelling simplicity of the unknown peasant who, long 
 ago, tenderly called the shrew-mouse an dallagfheoir> 
 the little blind one of the grass, and the butterfly 
 dealan Dhe, the little flame of God. The one is the 
 beauty of fantasy, the other is the beauty of a child's 
 mind matured in joy. And so is it with Beauty. 
 We dwell on this loveliness, or on that : and some 
 white one, flame- winged, passes us on the way, saying, 
 6 It is Loveliness I seek, not lovely things. 1 
 
 In truth, Beauty is the light that we call imagina- 
 tion the radiance, the glow, the bloom : we think of 
 it as in those lines of Pron&theus Unbound : 
 
 ' Beloved and most beautiful, who wearest 
 The shadow of that soul by which I live/ 
 
 Beauty is less a quality of things than a spiritual 
 x 
 
energy : it lies not in the things seen but in harmoni- 
 ous perception. Yet, also, it can dwell apart, in the 
 sanctuary of this flower or of that woman's face. But 
 in itself it is as impersonal as dew, as secret and divine 
 and immortal for, as you will remember, Midir, the 
 lord of sleep and youth and love, the son of Angus, 
 lord of death and the years and the winged passions, 
 was made of dew, of the secret dews : Midir of the 
 twilight, of the secret and silent peoples, of the veiled 
 immortalities. It can exist for us in one face, on one 
 form, in one spirit, on the lifted waters, on the hills 
 of the west, in trampling marches of sound, in delicate 
 airs, but it is in all of these, and everywhere : wher- 
 ever the imagination is become light, and that light 
 is the light of flame. To each the star of his desire : 
 but Beauty is beyond the mortal touch of number, as 
 of change and time. Has any ever spoken more deeply 
 of this than Plato, when in that vision of Perfect 
 Beauty in the Banquet he writes : ' It is not like any 
 face or hands or bodily thing; it is not word nor 
 thought ; it is not in something else, neither living 
 thing, nor earth nor heaven ; only by itself in its own 
 way in one form it for ever Is.' 
 
 Is it not he also, the wise and noble dreamer, who 
 makes Socrates say in the Phaedmis, ' Beloved Pan, and 
 all ye other gods . . . give me beauty in the inward 
 soul/ 
 
 The vision of the few. Yes. But a handful of 
 pine-seed will cover mountains with the green majesty 
 
 xi 
 
of forest. And so I too will set my face to the wind 
 and throw my handful of seed on high : 
 
 Cuiridh mi m'aodann arms a' ghaoith 
 'Us tilgim baslach caoin an aird. 
 
 But you you are of the little clan, for whom 
 this book is : you who have gone upon dark ways, and 
 have known the starless road, and perchance on that 
 obscure way learned what we have yet to learn. For 
 you, and such as you, it is still a pleasure to gather 
 bindweed of thoughts and dreams ; still a pleasure to 
 set these dreams, these thoughts, to the airs and 
 pauses and harmonies of considered speech. So, by 
 your acceptance of this book, let me be not only of 
 your fellowship but of that little scattered clan to 
 whom the wild bees of the spirit come, as secret wings 
 in the dark, with the sound and breath of forgotten 
 things. 
 
 xn 
 
The Sunset of Old Tales 
 
 ' Mieux que les scenes 
 troublantes du jour, ces 
 musiques et ces voiac 
 nocturnes me disaient 
 f esprit cache.' 
 
 E. SCHURJ&, Sanc- 
 tuaires d' Orient. 
 
THE SUNSET OF OLD TALES 
 
 THE TREUD NAN RON 
 
 THE MAN ON THE MOOR 
 
 THE WOMAN AT THE CROSS-WAYS 
 
 THE LORDS OF WISDOM 
 
 THE WAYFARER 
 
 QUEENS OF BEAUTY 
 
 ORPHEUS AND OISIN 
 
THE SUNSET OF OLD TALES 
 
 'And some were woven 
 single, and some twofold, 
 and some threefold.' 
 
 BLAKE: Vala, Night viii. 
 
 I DO not know if in anything I have a keener 
 pleasure than in the hearing ... by the 
 hearthside, or looking down into green water, 
 or on the upland road that strings glen upon 
 glen along its white swaying neck ... of 
 the old tales and poems of beauty and wonder, 
 retold sometimes in an untarnished excellence, 
 sometimes crudely, sometimes so disguised in 
 the savour of the place and hour that not then, 
 and perhaps not for long, are they recognised 
 in accent or discerned in feature. Perhaps 
 this pleasure is the greater because it is the 
 pleasure of the tale-lover, for the tale's sake, 
 rather than of the tale- collector, for the quest's 
 sake. I do not know how many tales and frag- 
 ments of tales and broken legends I have heard, 
 now here, now there ; or what proportion of 
 these was old, or what proportion of them was 
 
 3 
 
The Sun- of the fantasy or dreaming mind of to-day, or 
 set of Old how many retained the phrase and accent of 
 a es ' the past in taking on the phrase of to-day and 
 the accent of the narrator's mind. It is the 
 / light, the lift, the charm, the sigh, the cadence 
 I want. I care less for the hill-tale in a book 
 than told by the firelight, and a song is better 
 in the wash of the running wave than in 
 crowded rooms. Every sad tale and every 
 beautiful tale should have a fit background 
 for its setting ; and I have perhaps grown so 
 used to the shaken leaf, or the lifted water, 
 or the peat-glow in small rooms filled with 
 warm shadow and the suspense of dreams, 
 as the background of sgeul and rann and 
 oran, that I am become unwisely impatient of 
 the common conditions. Yet even in these 
 much lies with ourselves. I have a friend 
 who says he can be happy with a gas-jet in 
 a room in a street-house. He opens a window 
 by the edge of an inch, if there is no wind 
 crying in the chimney, so that a thin air 
 may be heard rising and falling: and turns 
 his back to the gas-jet : and keeps his 
 eyes on the book before him. But are 
 there many of his kind, who are unhappy, 
 being kept in towns, and yet "know how to 
 become masters of illusion ? I know a family 
 of distinction in one of our great cities who 
 
 4 
 
have never heard tale or song, legend or The Sun 
 dream, or any breath of romance, except at set 
 entertainments in their own or another's aes * 
 house, or at a concert or at a theatre. I 
 have heard them spoken of as rich people, 
 as having more than they need or could ever 
 use. They are poor people, I fear. In the 
 pity I have for them I admit there is some- 
 thing, too, of dread. Could one fall into that 
 estate? For they live what is called 'life.' 
 But as they are never alone, and in a sense 
 have always, everywhere, a gas-jet, I cannot 
 see that the existence they lead is life, that 
 they live. If it were not for the imaginative 
 solace of fires, those unconquerable allies of 
 dreams and romance, I suppose the deep love 
 for the things of which I speak would die 
 away from the life of towns. 
 
 It would be a good thing to be a collector, 
 and to know how to winnow the gathering, 
 and where to range and where to place apart. 
 We owe a debt, indeed, to the few who are 
 truly fit for the task they have set themselves. 
 But there are some minds which care very little 
 to hear about things, when they can have the 
 things themselves. It is not for the service 
 of beauty, but only for the uses of formal 
 knowledge, that one might desire a stuffed 
 cuckoo. But a cuckoo in a case or a 
 
Tales. 
 
 The Sun- cuckoo in a cage, if one would live barred, 
 set of Old which I cannot believe is not a cuckoo. 
 The bells in the grey cloud when, unseen, the 
 cuckoo swims on the wind . . . that is the 
 cuckoo. 
 
 I have good friends who have urged me to 
 collect folklore. In a sense I have done so 
 since I was a child. But I do not care to go 
 pencilling through the Highlands or from isle 
 to isle. The tale or song thus sought loses 
 its charm for me. I like to be taken by sur- 
 prise when, beyond the hawthorn in bloom, a 
 swallow swoops, and I know that spring is 
 come ; or when, in the beech - thicket, the 
 mavis suddenly calls the five long calls of 
 joy, and the thrill of June is felt ; or when, 
 above the fern, in a windless moonlit silence, 
 the night-jar throbs the passion of midsummer. 
 And, too, I should be uneasy if I had to do 
 more than listen. For I remember a friend's 
 telling how a 'folklorist' rejoiced a year or 
 two ago over strange tales gathered out of 
 the wilds of Inverness, and builded on them a 
 theory, and gave much delighted perplexity 
 to himself and others, till another specialist 
 broke the enchantment by pointing out that 
 the so-called oriental survivals were no more 
 than a year old, being, in fact, nothing else than 
 Gaelic renderings of parts of The Arabian 
 
 6 
 
Nights, translated by an enthusiast, who The Sun- 
 wished to bring to the Gael something of set of Old 
 accepted worth. 
 
 I have sometimes given of this sea-drift 
 and wind-drift which has remained with me, 
 as I chanced to remember, or as the theme 
 invited. And I have written, too, of the 
 charm of these old-world legends and romances 
 in their modern survivals or often bewildering 
 changes. 
 
 But if ever I yielded to this quest as a pos- 
 sessing eagerness it would be to catch the last 
 reflections of the sunset of old tales. And not 
 the least curious would be those which have 
 lapsed into all but forgetfulness. I take, 
 almost haphazard, six of these, much as I 
 find them in my notes, or as accident has 
 awakened in my memory; and a seventh, 
 ' The Wayfarer,' I have added partly because 
 it also has, in these old Gaelic lands, the sun- 
 set hue of an immortal tale told in supreme 
 beauty so many ages ago ; and partly because 
 I have not yet had opportunity to include 
 it fittingly since its original appearance some 
 years back in Cosmopolis. These tales, or 
 their like, that in some form have travelled 
 across so many lands and seas, have lived on 
 so many tongues and seen time rise and fall 
 like the punctual tides, and are now fading 
 
 7 
 
The Sun- into forgetfulness with the passing of the last 
 set of Old western tongue as ancient as they, are very 
 Tales. slight. But they have this to their gain, that 
 they are on the rainbow-side of the sunset, 
 and that few tales of the kind will now be 
 told by the crofter or hill-shepherd or isles- 
 man, or by old or young at the ceilidh, or by 
 those who stand back more and more from 
 the ways and the cross-ways. 
 
 8 
 
THE TREUD NAN RON 
 
 ' What have I heard but the 
 
 murmur of sand : 
 What have I seen but 
 foam . . .' 
 
 (Refrain of a Gaelic Song.) 
 
 LAST August, sailing one day on the Lynn of 
 Morven in a black-green calm, though from 
 Cruachan to Nevis a storm darkened the 
 Appin hills with cloud and wind, I heard 
 from a man of Lome a seal-story that was not 
 so much a tale as a fragment of old legend. 
 There is a low sandy isle among the isles of 
 Lome, lying in Morven waters between the 
 Corrie of the Stags and the island of Lismore. 
 It is called, I think, Faileag-mhara, which is 
 to say, little lawn or meadow of the sea : a 
 good name, for its pretty beaches and bent- 
 held sands enclose grassy spaces, where the 
 tern descends to her rude nest and the scart 
 and guillemot sometimes breed. My Lome 
 friend spoke of it as the isle of the piocach, 
 because that fish, the saithe, is often to be 
 
 9 
 
The Treud caught in plenty, in quiet twilights, off its 
 Nan Ron. north shore. It might be called, also, the 
 isle of shells, for many beautiful shells lie in 
 its little bays and pools. And a poet might 
 call it the isle of voices, for it is always either 
 in some low tranced song, or shaken with a 
 wild music ; and, besides, it is like a listening 
 ear of the sea, held to a mysterious sighing 
 from the dark mountains of Morven, or from 
 the continual whispering of the tides of Appin 
 running by the head of Lismore. In storm it 
 is like a harp hung among the branches of 
 tormented trees : men have heard terrifying 
 cries and an intolerable wailing when passing 
 it in mist and the blindness of tempest. 
 
 On the still noon of which I write I had 
 seen a dark head rise from the purple-shadowed 
 blueness of the sea about fifty fathoms away, 
 and had remarked to my companion that the 
 seal yonder was * an old man,' as the saying is, 
 and of great size. 
 
 'Ay, he is well known here. It's the 
 biggest bull I Ve seen this side the west o' 
 Jura. They say he 's fy. Howsoever, he '11 
 bide no seal near him neither man-seal nor 
 woman-seal. He had a mate once. She swam 
 to near a geola, a yawl as we might be saying 
 in the English, where a woman leaned in the 
 moonshine and played a foreign thing like 
 
 10 
 
what we call the cruit-spannteach. A man The Treud 
 took a gun and put a ball into her side. She Nan 
 came up three times, crying like a child or 
 bleating like a lamb-lost ewe maybe : it was 
 between the one and the other, and ill to 
 hearken. The bull yonder dashed at the stern 
 o' the yawl and broke the stearing-gear. The 
 failm was torn away, ay an' I tell you the 
 crann sgoidc swung this way an' that the 
 boom swung this way and that, for all the 
 calmness of the calm. The man with a gun 
 tried to shoot the man-seal, but couldn't. The 
 singing woman with the foreign music went 
 below crying : and I am not wondering at that 
 if she had seen the eyes of the woman-seal. 
 I Ve seen the pain in them, I have. I Ve seen 
 tears in their eyes. I saw one once away 
 out by Heiskir, that was made mateless and 
 childless one red sunset, and leaned on a rock 
 staring motionless acrost the black an' white 
 o' the tost sea. She did not move when a ball 
 struck the rock, an' sent splinters flyin'. She 
 did not turn her head, no not by this or that. 
 She stared out acrost the black an' white. It 
 wasn't where the bull died, or w r here her 
 young sank. It was out acrost the black an' 
 white o' the tost sea. The red of the set was 
 in her eyes. They were redder: ay, I saw 
 that The black was green about the rock, 
 
 ii 
 
The Treud an' the splash had the whiteness of snow, an' 
 Nan Ron. the mussels and dog-whelks on the rock glis- 
 tered in the shine. A scart flew by her 
 screamin', an' the terns wailed. She just 
 stared. Her head was up, an' she stared an' 
 stared an' stared an' stared. The shooters left 
 her alone. It was dark when I sailed east o' 
 that' 
 
 * How long has that old man been here ? ' I 
 asked. 
 
 * I am not knowing that. No one knows 
 that. There 's a man over yonder, John Stuart 
 up Ballachulish way, who told me it was nine 
 hundred years old. Is that foam ? Maybe, 
 maybe. Did ye ever hear tell of the story of 
 the Seal of the Shiant Isles ? No ? It was 
 like this : though for sure, it 's no story, but 
 only a saying. 
 
 * He was an old bull-seal, and there's no 
 man knows or ever knew the years he had. 
 He was grey with the sea and time. Padruig 
 Dhomnullach, the Heiskir bard, made a song 
 on him. He said he had the years back to 
 the days when Oisein was beautiful as the 
 west wind on the yellow banks o' May. Ay, 
 that he swam the Moyle, when the swans o' 
 Lir were on it, with their singing beyond all 
 singing for sweetness and pain. An' that he 
 was older than them : older than the sgeul or 
 
 12 
 
the shennachie, than the tale or the teller. His The Treud 
 name was Ron, an' he was the first o' the Nan 
 clan. He was the son of the King of Ireland, 
 and a brother of a son of that King. His 
 mother was a beautiful woman of the sea in 
 the north isles. She was called Sea-Sand. 
 Perhaps it was because her hair was yellow as 
 the sands of the sea. Perhaps it was because 
 she was like the sand that is now here and 
 now there, and is sometimes so light that a 
 mew's foot does not stir it and sometimes so 
 smilin' and treacherous that a man sinks in it 
 to his death. An' one day his brother came 
 over to him with a message. They played a 
 game on the shore. It was with great curved 
 shells, and they were thrown against the wind 
 they were, an' a skilful and crafty throwing is 
 needed for that, they with the holes in them 
 and the shape like partans of the sea. But 
 that day the wind caught one of the shells in 
 the midway of the hurl, an' it swung sideway 
 an' struck R6n on the whiteness of the brow. 
 He cried a cry, and was down. And when 
 the King's son saw that, he had fear. Men 
 would say he had put death on his brother. 
 So he ran from that place. He looked back, 
 and he saw sand blowing upon the body, 
 and falling upon it, and heard a moaning 
 an' a crying. Then he knew it was Sea-Sand 
 
 i 
 
 o 
 
TheTreud keening the son of her love. And he saw the 
 Nan Ron. wave running up the shore, and she meeting 
 it. And then she lifted Ron and threw him 
 in the wave, and he rose like a man an' fell 
 down like a seal, for tall he was, an' handsome 
 he was, but he had no arms now an' no legs, 
 but only a slimness and long body. "The sea 
 for your home," she cried, and that crying was 
 on the wind. And that 's how Ron took to 
 the sea, but remembers the shore for ever an' 
 ever. He an' his. Ay, air chuan, air mhuir, 
 air chorsa, in the deep ocean, in the narrow 
 sea, by the shores.' 
 
 And after that he told me how Ron took a 
 woman of the land and kept her in a pool of 
 the rocks. And the young they had were as 
 good in the sea as on the land : and they had 
 brown eyes that the salt did not sting, and 
 long brown hair like seaweed, and their songs 
 were wild. 
 
 And thinking of this that I was told on 
 the Lynn of Morven, my mind was often 
 troubled with some other confused memory. 
 What had I known of this before : when had 
 I heard the like, and if so, where ? It was 
 only to-day, at the flying of a bird and the 
 falling of its shadow across a flapping sail, 
 that, in a moment, I know not how, I found 
 myself thinking of an old Greek tale of how a 
 
 14 
 
prince of Salamis, Telamon, slew his brother The Treud 
 at quoit-throwing on the shore, and he too, a Nan Ron. 
 king's son, son of Aeacus, of Aegina : and how 
 that brother's name was Phocus, which is to 
 say a seal : and how the name of Aeacus' sea- 
 love, and the mother of Phocus, was Psam- 
 matheia, which is Sea-Sand, sand of the sea. 
 
THE MAN ON THE MOOR 
 
 ' Woe for the doom of a 
 dark soul . . .' 
 
 SOPHOCLES. 
 
 ' The desert groweth. 
 Woe unto him who con- 
 taineth deserts.' 
 
 NIETZSCHE. 
 
 ON the mainland of Ardnamurchan there is a 
 house by the shore, built of grey stones, against 
 which the yellow flags and gallingale run up 
 like surf, and behind which a long slope of 
 bracken looks like the green sea beyond rocks 
 when the wind is heavy on it, though with no 
 more to see than a myriad wrinkling. There 
 is no other house near, nor boat on the shore : 
 and I saw or heard never a sheep, but the few 
 thin beasts of Anndra MacCaskill browsing 
 the salt grass by the long, broken, wandering 
 dune where the rocks lie in a heavy jumble. 
 It is a desolate place. I saw no birds in all 
 the bramble, never a finch in the undershaws, 
 nor shilfa in the tansy-wastes. Even on the 
 shore the white wings of the gulls and terns 
 were not catching the light : I saw nothing 
 
 16 
 
but three birds, a dotterel flying and wailing, The Man 
 a scart black-green on a weedy rock, and a <> n the 
 grey skua hawking the sighing suck of the Moon 
 ebb. The light was that of storm, though 
 the twilight was already gathering in every 
 corrie and hollow : and in October the day 
 falls soon. The sea south was a dark, toss- 
 ing waste, with long irregular dykes of foam 
 that ran and merged when you looked at 
 them, but were like broken walls on fields of 
 black rye when you saw them only through 
 the side of the eyes. South-west and west 
 long splashes of red flame ruddied the wild 
 sea and brought the black to blue. It was 
 not this year, nor last, nor the year before, 
 that I heard that of which I now write : but 
 I remember it all as though it were of yester- 
 day. A bit of loneroid, gale or bog-myrtle as 
 it is called in the south, wet, with the light 
 green and the dark green on the same stem, 
 will often, in a moment, bring Tighnaclachan 
 before me, so that I see just that desolate 
 shore and no other shore, and hear the scat- 
 tered lamenting of the few sheep yonder, and 
 see that scart on the weedy rock plucking at 
 its black -green feathers, or that grey skua 
 with its melancholy cry hawking the sighing 
 shallows of the ebb beyond the ledges, to this 
 side of the house itself, half windowless yet it 
 
 B 17 
 
The Man may be, and with the byre-doors open and 
 
 on the falling back and rotting. 
 
 Moor. j t was a ma tt er O f no moment that took 
 
 me there : partly to meet one coming another 
 way, partly to see Dionaid Maclure, a frail 
 old woman who kept the place for Neil 
 McNeil, her brother. I had walked some 
 three miles, and was tired ; not with the dis- 
 tance, but with a something in the wind, and 
 perhaps from the singular gloom of the place 
 at that hour in that grey loneliness, caught 
 between deserted lands and a sea never 
 quiet, an angry troubled waste, perpetually 
 lamenting, continually shaken with fierce 
 wraths. 
 
 As I came close to Tighnaclachan, I saw no 
 smoke above the boulder-held thatch. The 
 ragged pony I had seen there before was not 
 in the airidh beyond. It was with relief I 
 heard the clucking of a hen somewhere. The 
 only other living thing I saw was a magpie 
 by a pool of rain-water, stalking with sharp 
 cries of anger its own restless image. 
 
 Yet it was here that, before I heard the tale 
 Neil McNeil told me, I heard words from old 
 Janet which put a beauty into that lonely un- 
 fa omely place for me, then and for always. I 
 forget what led to the beauty in the old heart, 
 and stirred it : but I remember the shape it 
 
 18 
 
took on the old lips. She had given me tea, The Man 
 and w r e had sat awhile in the brown dusk by on the 
 the comforting red glow of the peats, and Moor - 
 then I told her something, I forget what 
 perhaps of some one we knew, perhaps a bit 
 of a tale, or a song maybe, likely the sigh of a 
 ballad or song when she leaned to me, and 
 said, ' It 's a blessing they are, a healing and a 
 blessing : ay, so they are, the moonlight an' 
 the dew. When we're young, summer's 
 sweet wi' them : when we 're old, they 're 
 in the heart still. It's the song left, the 
 memory o' the song, a sweet air, when the 
 bird 's flown for aye. Ay, my dear, an' 
 there's more than that to be said. God 
 made the sun an' the day : the Holy Spirit, 
 the night an' the stars ; but Christ made the 
 moonlight an' the dew.' 
 
 She was tender and sweet, old Dionaid: 
 fair in life and fair in death. Strange that 
 the beauty of a single thought can thence- 
 forth clothe the desolation in loveliness, and 
 change the grey air and the grey sea and the 
 grey face of a seared land into a sanctuary of 
 peace, as though unknown birds builded there, 
 doves of the spirit. I remember, once, on the 
 waste of Subasio behind Assisi, that some one 
 near me said the barrenness was terrible, more 
 lifeless and sad than any other solitude. To 
 
 19 
 
The Man me, at that moment, as it happened, this was 
 on the no t S o : the hill glowed with the divine light, 
 ' that came, not from the east welling it or the 
 west gathering it, but from the immortal life 
 of the heart of St. Francis and a storm of 
 white doves rose with flashing wings, so that 
 I was dazzled : and only when I saw that 
 they were not there did I know I had seen 
 the prayers and joy of a multitude of hearts, 
 children of him to whom the wind was 
 ' brother ' and the grass * sister.' 
 
 But now I must go back to that of which 
 I meant to write. I have given the lonely 
 setting of the place where, when we came in 
 at dayfall for the porridge, Neil McNeil a 
 tired man, tall, gaunt, grey-black, with cold 
 blue eyes like the solander's told me of the 
 man MacRoban, or MacRobany. 
 
 There is no need to tell of what kept me 
 there till long after dark was come, with the 
 flowing tide making so heavy a noise among 
 the loose rock that at times our words sounded 
 hollow and far away : nor of all that we three, 
 waiting there, talked of : nor what dreams and 
 thoughts came into that flame-lit dark room 
 in the desolate house by the sea. When Neil 
 spoke once, unquestioned, it was after a long 
 silence when we were unconsciously listening 
 to the loud tick-tack, tick-tack of the great 
 
 20 
 
wall-clock as though we were eager almost to The Man 
 a strained anxiety to hear urgent tidings, some n the 
 news expected or feared, or half - guessed, Moor - 
 coming mysteriously, on quivering lips : with 
 a foreign sound, broken, meshed in obscurity 
 hearing at the same time the gathering 
 clamour in the sea's voice, the hoarse scroach- 
 an-scroach of the flung surge on the dragged 
 reluctant beach, and the loud-demanding cry 
 of the wind behind the confused and trampling 
 noise of the tide, that by the sound was in the 
 house itself and away inland. 
 
 'I can't tell you much about what you 
 asked,' he began slowly. 'There isn't much 
 to tell. You've been in or near that place 
 away in the Italian country, and may know 
 more than I know. It was this way, then, 
 since I must tell you the little I know. You 
 thought, that day we talked about it, the 
 name was MacCroban. But I 'm not knowing 
 if there 's any such name : any way it is not 
 the man's name, the man I 'm thinking of, the 
 man I have in my mind. His name was 
 MacRdban, or MacRdbany. ' 
 
 'Was?' 
 
 'Ay.' 
 
 Tick-tack . . . tick-tack . . . and the loud 
 anger of the sea at the door. I was glad when 
 Neil went on. 
 
 21 
 
The Man * He had no home. I met him a long way 
 ?? the inland on the Moss of Achnacree, beyond 
 Morven, across the Sound of Lome. It was 
 at the edge o' dark, and he was lying with his 
 head on a stone. I stooped and spoke to 
 him. 
 
 6 " Poor man, have you the heavy sickness 
 on you ? " I asked, and again in the English, 
 when he did not answer. 
 
 '"It is dying you are," I said. "I fear, 
 poor man, it is near death you will be if you 
 lie there." 
 
 * " I will give you all things," he said in a 
 thin voice, weary as a three-day wind in the 
 east : " Ay, I will give you secrets and all 
 things, if you will give me death." 
 
 6 " And for why that ? " I asked. 
 
 ' " I die like this every night," he said, " and 
 there are three of us. I am not knowing 
 where my two brothers will be, in what land, 
 west or east : my brother John, and my 
 brother Raphael. But they, too, are like this, 
 like what I am, like what you see me here. 
 They have their heads on stones, in a waste 
 place. They call upon death. If any man 
 stoops as you do, over John, my brother, he 
 will say what I say ' I will give you all, I 
 will give you all secrets, I will give you 
 knowledge and power, if you will give me one 
 
 22 
 
thing, if you will give me death.' And if any The Man 
 man stoops over Raphael, my brother, he will the 
 say that also that John our brother would oon 
 say, and that I say." 
 
 * At that I thought the poor man had the 
 black trouble. 
 
 4 "No," he said, as though he knew my 
 thought. " It is not madness I have, but old, 
 old weariness." 
 
 ' " And what will your name be ? " I asked. 
 
 '"Here I have been, in this country, for 
 seven years, wandering. And here my name, 
 by some chance of change, is MacRoban, or 
 MacRobany. And that is no ill change, for 
 it means son of Roban or Robany, and that 
 is what I am. But, no," he added, " it is not 
 the name you have now in your mind. It is 
 an older name than that. It is a name that 
 has the sand of the desert on its feet. It is 
 a name written on the weeping wall in the 
 Holy City of Zion." 
 
 ' I looked at the man, though the darkness 
 was fast falling through the greyness. I 
 remember a crying of many curlews in that 
 waste place, and the suddenness of snipe 
 drumming in a wet hollow a stone's -throw 
 beyond where two lapwings never stopped 
 wheeling and wailing. 
 
 * " And who will you be?" I said. My voice 
 23 
 
The Man was hard, for the cold of a fear was in my 
 
 on the bones. 
 
 Moor. < My name ig Robanij he said> Daniel 
 
 Robani. I am Daniel Robani, and my brother 
 John is Johannes Robani, and my brother 
 Raphael is Raphael Robani. And there 's no 
 weariness like our weariness. And every 
 night we lie down to die, but we never die." 
 
 6 Then I knew the poor man was mad, and 
 seeing I could not lift him, I gave him my 
 cloak and hurried on to the clachan of Ledaig 
 beyond the Moss to get help. I saw the 
 minister, a stranger come for a month, but 
 a good man and kind. He came with me. 
 We saw no man. We found my cloak, but 
 no man. 
 
 "Next day the minister had me into his 
 room. " Tell me again what words he spoke," 
 he said to me. I told him. Then he leaned 
 from his chair, and said to me : " Neil McNeil, 
 you have dreamed a dream or seen a mystery. 
 Best go to your home now, and in silence : 
 ay, go away without word of this. For I do 
 not know what is dream and what is vision, 
 and what is truth and what madness. But 
 hear this : In the tenth year of this century 
 we live in, a great vase or jar of marble was 
 found in the excavated ruin of an ancient city 
 in the southlands of Italy, called Aquila 
 
 24 
 
which is to say, lolair, Eagle and in that jar The Man 
 was a copper plate. On the one side was on the 
 engraved in the Hebrew, 'A plate like this Moor< 
 has gone unto every tribe.' On the other 
 side, and also in the Hebrew, was engraved 
 the Death Warrant of Jesus of Nazareth, 
 called Jesus the Christ. And of the four wit- 
 nesses who signed the condemnation of the 
 Christ the names of three were the names of 
 three brothers, Daniel Robani, and Johannes 
 Robani, and Raphael Robani." 
 
 Neil ceased abruptly. The noise of the 
 waves was as a multitude of hands batting , 
 the walls of the house : the wail and cry of 
 the wind was like a dreadful Spirit. Before 
 the red glow of the peat-fire we sat silent. 
 Tick-tack, tick-tack: and the calling of the 
 sea, the calling of the sea. 
 
THE WOMAN AT THE CROSS- WAYS 
 
 '. . . fiercest is the madness 
 that springeth from inappeas- 
 able desires.' PINDAR, Nem. xi. 
 
 I DO not know in how many old literatures 
 that tradition survives of a being of the veiled 
 world who can at will pass from diminutive 
 shape to a sombre and terrifying aspect It 
 may not be at will, always, for those shadowy 
 beings who are seen only by loosened passions 
 may be creatures that feed upon these passions, 
 as creatures of the wilds upon sudden pas- 
 tures. And as they are fed, these shy divini- 
 ties change : that which was small is become 
 great : that which was human is now inhuman : 
 the stream flowing past in the darkness is be- 
 come Terror whispering, the wind among the 
 shaken grasses on the moor is Fear, clothing 
 herself in shadows. 
 
 A friend and kinsman, who at one time had 
 an other- world sight beyond that of any I have 
 known, told me lately that the reason why he 
 
 26 
 
had put a chain upon that hound of super- The 
 
 natural vision and kept it in a secret place in Woman at 
 
 his mind and never willingly let it loose upon ^5 ros! 
 
 the dreams and thoughts and deed-shapes of 
 
 men and women, was because of this, that 
 
 often he had seen the disembodied passions 
 
 and desires. Sometimes, he said, they were 
 
 like swallows flying about the eaves of a house, 
 
 sometimes like crested demons standing with 
 
 a spear upon the dark brows of advancing 
 
 tempest, sometimes like trees waving many 
 
 arms and with starlike eyes in their dim 
 
 cavernous depths. And often, he told me, 
 
 these changed, as the embodied passions and 
 
 desires cried out to them with longing and 
 
 proud laughters, or waited like children in a 
 
 wood, or bade them slake their thirst at other 
 
 wells, or commanded them return whence 
 
 they came, or, in a shaken dread, were still, 
 
 or, with scornful eyes, silent. And as they 
 
 were fed, so did these disembodied passions 
 
 and desires grow ; or as they were denied, so 
 
 did they dwindle; but most were ravenous 
 
 with hunger, and were glutted with sweet 
 
 prey. 
 
 * And when the world that we call the other 
 world is become as open to the eyes as this 
 world-in-the-veils that we call our own,' he 
 said, 'one must either see too much, or be 
 
 27 
 
The content to shroud his eyes and see only as 
 
 Woman at others see : and that way I have chosen/ 
 
 So> l think ften> may Jt be with those 
 beings of the wastes. Some there may be 
 
 that do not change creatures of the woods ; 
 the Ceasg, lovely and harmless, in the flowing 
 brown depths of the hill-stream ; the Grian- 
 uisg, that herds flocks of white doves; the 
 green Glastig, that milks the wild deer ; the 
 Morglas, sitting silent on a high boulder in 
 unpeopled glens at twilight. But these have 
 their life apart from us. They are the off- 
 spring of another father, as the slim women 
 of the trees and the waves, as the blind grey- 
 girl of the cliffs whom the hawks and wild 
 falcons feed and guard. Many fear her, and 
 have heard her crying in rain, or when the 
 broken winds wail among crags and ledges. 
 
 But of the others, many change ; some at 
 will, to appal or to deceive or to evade ; some 
 because they are as shadows that shrink to 
 daisies or increase to vast and menacing shapes 
 just as the mind that perceives them mirrors 
 them. 
 
 Of these, I think, is the woman of tears, the 
 Beantuiream, the weeping woman, the woman 
 of mourning, she who keens the sorrow of 
 death in lonely places. How many have 
 heard that lament, by running water in the 
 
 2S 
 
dusk, by pools where the grey owl hawks the The 
 grey moth, on moors when the lapwings sleep Woman at 
 and even the curlews are not crying under the Of Cross " 
 moist down-dropping stars. 
 
 Sometimes she is seen as the Washer of the 
 Ford, a tall, gaunt woman, chanting the Seis- 
 Bliais, the Death-Dirge, as she washes the 
 shroud of him who sees her ; and sometimes 
 she may suddenly grow great and terrible, and 
 inhabit darkness, and the end is come. Some- 
 times she is seen as the Nigheag Cheag a 
 Chroin, the little washer of sorrow, perhaps 
 singing low while she steps the stones of 
 a ford, or moves along the dim banks where 
 the dew is white on sorrel and meadowsweet, 
 a leineag cheag bhais na lamh . . . her little 
 shroud of death in her hand ... a caoineadh 
 chroin na ceul, the keen of sorrow in her 
 mouth for him or her whose death is near. 
 
 I heard once of a meeting with the Woman 
 of Tears told by one whose brother was he who 
 had seen and heard : but of these neither died 
 at that time. It is not of that I am thinking, 
 however, but of something in the brother's 
 tale as he told it, and as it was told to me. 
 
 ( It was this way,' said he who told me : 
 * . . . when Micheil went home that night, he 
 went by the old packhorse road on the high 
 moor, for the rains had made a bog of the 
 
 29 
 
 i 
 
The highway for more than a mile near Alltdhu, 
 
 Woman at that was our house, a big stone house with the 
 
 tte Cross- three byres to it. He was cold and hungry, 
 
 for he had not touched sup or bite since noon 
 
 of the day; and if he was sad it was not 
 
 for any who called our hearts their home, 
 
 but because of his tiredness, it may be, or the 
 
 darkness and the wet, or mayhap for a song's 
 
 lament that was on his lips or in his mind, 
 
 for he was aye fond of sweet sorrowful lilts. 
 
 ' But when he was come to within the near- 
 ness of a mile, the rain was up, and the half- 
 moon shone. It was so still he could hear the 
 snipe drumming in the bog below Creag-dhu. 
 There wasn't a sound else, no, not a sound, 
 but only the stillness of stillness. Tis a place, 
 yon, for the cry in' o' peewits an' the whaup's 
 lamentings : but on this night one might have 
 heard the grey moth dancing above the eyes 
 o' the heather. 
 
 6 Micheil hated the deepness of that silence, 
 and it was worse when the snipe were still 
 again. He whistled, but the sound went so 
 far out upon the moor, and was so unlike the 
 thing he had made, that he was troubled. He 
 went on slowly with the heavy dislike on him 
 for the noise of his feet. Sorrows were in his 
 mind by now, and the lamenting of the heart 
 that is never at peace because the things that 
 
 30 
 
cannot be are so great and desirable and the The 
 things that are look so broken and poor and Woman at 
 desolate. 
 
 ' When nigh upon Donnusk Water he 
 stopped : to see the stones of the ford, he 
 said: though he knew the stones, and that 
 the water was shallow, and was aflow below 
 them at that. 
 
 * He thought it was myself at first. 
 
 '"Is it you, John?" ... he said in the 
 whisper that he thought would be the loud 
 voice. 
 
 * He saw then it wasn't me ; no, nor any 
 man : but a woman, or a girl, stooping over 
 the water. 
 
 ' Perhaps he thought it was Elsie the cow- 
 woinan, or our niece Kirsteen : he did not 
 think so, but to hide the whisper in his 
 mind he lifted that thought on to the banks 
 above it. 
 
 ' " Ealasaidh "... he called, his voice fall- 
 ing like a splashing stone. 
 
 " Will that be you, Cairstinef" he called 
 again, but lower, and he looked behind him 
 when he had spoken. 
 
 6 Then he saw the woman or the girl look 
 round. He had not heard her singing before, 
 but he heard it now. By that sorrowful 
 lamentation, low and sweet forbye, and by 
 
The the tears that glistered white on the grey face, 
 
 Woman at he knew it was the Nigheag Cheag a Chroin. 
 the Cross- < Micheil was a man who would not let fear 
 eat his heart. He gave a low sob, and waited 
 till the sickness of the cold sweat was gone : 
 then he licked the dryness of his lips. 
 
 ' " Peace to you, good woman," he said. 
 
 * " And so you know me, mo cuat" she 
 answered to him, putting down on the grass 
 the whiteness of the leinag cheag bhais, the 
 little white shroud of death. 
 
 * " I know you, Woman of Tears," he said, 
 " though why is it calling me mo cuat you are, 
 for I am no lover of yours ? And that white- 
 ness there on the grass, sure it is for a child or 
 a maid, that ? " 
 
 ' " Let me look at you," she said. 
 
 ' He saw her tall now, and dark : bigger 
 than the great alder on the bank not far from 
 her. 
 
 c "Do you remember? " she said. 
 
 6 Micheil was still at that. "No," he 
 whispered, when the high reed near him was 
 no more shaken with the breath of his pulse. 
 
 * " You will never be forgetting me, Micheil 
 Macnamara. As for that whiteness there, it 
 is the cloth of blindness." 
 
 '"Mo Bron" Micheil moaned; "sorrow 
 upon me ! " 
 
 32 
 
' " Look at me," she said. The 
 
 'Micheil put his gaze at her. It was no Womanat 
 woman now he saw, not even a bandia, but a r?5 Cross- 
 power or dominion, he thought. She had her 
 feet far down among roots of trees, and stars 
 thickening in her hair as they gather in the 
 vastness and blackness of the sky on a night 
 of frost. 
 
 '"Are you Death?" Micheil sobbed, his 
 knees shaking with the awe that was on him. 
 
 ' " I am older than Death," she said. Her 
 voice was beyond and above and behind and 
 below ; but it was no more than the lowness 
 of a low wind in the dusk. 
 
 ' Then he heard a chanting, as of trees in a 
 wind, and of waves rising and falling in caverns 
 by the sea : but he did not know, and never 
 knew, if it was in the tongue of the Gael he 
 heard, or in what tongue. But it would be 
 tbe Gaelic, for sure : for Micheil had little 
 English, then or after. And the words that 
 he heard were somewhat as are these words, 
 but remembered dimly they are, as in a 
 dream : 
 
 I am she who loveth Loneliness, 
 
 And Solitude is my breath. 
 
 I have my feet on graves, 
 
 And the resurrection of the dead is my food,, 
 
 For the dead rise as a vapour 
 
 c 33 
 
The And I breathe it as mist, 
 
 Woman at As mist that is lickt up of the wind, 
 the Cross- ^ am s ^ e w ^ stan( ^ s a * the pools : 
 
 I stand at the meeting of roads, 
 
 The little roads of the world 
 
 And the dark roads of life and death, 
 
 And the roads of all the worlds of the Universe. 
 
 I am Anama-Bhroin, the Soul of Sorrow : 
 
 I am she who loveth Loneliness, 
 
 And I have the Keys of Melancholy and of Joy. 
 
 My lover is Immortality, 
 
 For I am a Queen, 
 
 Queen of all things on earth and in the sea, 
 
 And in the white palaces of the stars 
 
 Built on the dark walls of Time 
 
 Above the Abyss. 
 
 * But this that was Solitude clothing herself 
 in voice was remembered by Micheil, as I say, 
 only as words in a dream. These may not be 
 the words, but only the dimness of the colour 
 of the words. He heard no more, and saw no 
 more. And when I found him in the morn- 
 ing he was stiff in cold sleep. It was a day 
 and a night and another day before he spoke, 
 and told me what I have told. He wrote it 
 too, later, on a paper : and so neither forgot. ' 
 
 But why, this evening, have I copied all : 
 this from notes taken some five or more years 
 ago ? It is not because both John and Micheil 
 Macnamara are dead. 
 
 It is because, to-day, lying in a solitary 
 34 
 
place, with the crying of curlews on the west The 
 wind, I was reading a book that I had last Woman at 
 read in the alien tongue of a great French ^f Cross- 
 poet, on a day when another wind of the west 
 stole up across the purple blueness of the Gulf 
 of Corinth, and passed away in the radiance 
 beyond the Steeps of Delphi. And, as I read 
 the ancient Hymn in the as fine English of 
 another translator, I found myself remember- 
 ing . . . something ... I knew not what : 
 and then I remembered. 
 
 For a time I wondered if the Greek mystic 
 and poet had, in his own hour and day, seen 
 a like vision and uttered it in beauty, such as 
 the islander Micheil had confusedly seen and 
 confusedly given again in broken words and 
 crude music. Then I took up the volume, 
 and read again (while a whisper was in the 
 coarse grass and tangled bracken, and far 
 away over the heather the curlews wailed 
 above the long low flowing tide of the west 
 wind) : 
 
 */ am Hecate of the Ways, of the Cross- 
 Ways, of the Darkness, of the Heaven and 
 the Earth and the Sea ; saffron-clad Goddess 
 of the Grave, exulting among the spirits of the 
 ' dead ; Perseia, lover of loneliness ; Queen who 
 holdest the Keys of the world . . .' 
 
 35 
 
THE LORDS OF WISDOM 
 
 ' Knowing that knowable 
 spirit, let not death dis- 
 turb yon.' The Praslma 
 Upanishad. 
 
 A FRIEND writes to me asking what is 'the 
 wisdom of the wild bees' ? He read the phrase, 
 he says, in something I wrote once, and also 
 in an Oban paper last year, quoted there as a 
 Hebridean saying. I am not sure if I have 
 heard it in English. But in Gaelic, either as 
 ' the old wisdom of the bees/ or ' the secret 
 knowledge of the bees/ the phrase occurs in 
 tales of the islanders of Tiree, Coll, lona, 
 Colonsay, and I slay as naturally as phrases 
 such as cho marbh ri sgadan, 'as dead as a 
 herring/ or cho luath ris na luinn, ' as swift 
 as the wave-tops ' ; or as, in tales of second- 
 sight, mar thubradh anns an dailgionn, ' as was < 
 spoken in the prophecy ' ; or as, in tales of 
 love, a ghraidhean mo chridhe, 'thou dear one 
 of my heart'; or as, in the telling of the 
 6 Tri Broin nan Sgeulachd ' (' The Three 
 
 36 
 
Sorrows of Story-Telling'), or other old tales, The 
 mention of the slacan druidheachd, the magic Lords of 
 wand, or being fo gheasaibh, under enchant- 
 ment. 
 
 In lona, some years ago, I heard an old 
 woman speak of the robin-redbreast as ' St. 
 Columba's Companion,' and of the wild bees 
 as his children : ' They have Colum's wisdom,' 
 she said. But I imagine that, in most in- 
 stances, the phrase is used without much 
 thought of the lost or time-worn meaning, 
 as are used the other phrases I have given. 
 * Ask the wild bee for what the Druids knew,' 
 and * ask the children of the heather where 
 Fionn sleeps,' and the like, point to an old 
 association of the wild bee and ancient wis- 
 dom. And, doubtless, the story-teller of 
 to-day might naturally use figuratively or 
 directly allude to a creature so familiar to 
 him ; as, last year, in one of the isles, a shep- 
 herd speaking to me ended his narrative with 
 ' and I would go to that country, and look 
 till I found, if I had the three wisdoms of the 
 bee, that can find its way in the grass, and 
 over the widest water, and across the height 
 of hills.' Here, of course, is meant the natural 
 knowledge of the bee, not the wisdom of 
 druid, or of Colum Cille, or of the masters 
 of illusion, or of the cumhachdan siorruidh 
 
 37 
 
The shuas, the everlasting powers above. I re- 
 
 Lords of member a line too, as part of an invocation 
 Wisdom. or oath> t h ou g n j cannot recall the latter 
 exactly. The line was fifth or sixth, and 
 ran, 'by the wisdom of the air-travellers,' or 
 words to that effect (possibly birds in their 
 migration, and not bees, were meant). The 
 invocation, if such it were, began : 
 
 Air a ghrian anns an iarm, 
 Air an adhar os do chionn, 
 Air an talamh os do bhonn, 
 Air an dreighinn naoimh, 
 
 and invoked also other things of earth and 
 elemental things. And not long ago I heard 
 a phrase used by a Gaelic preacher so nearly 
 in the words of a great writer that I thought it 
 was a quotation from some poem or legendary 
 tale familiar to me, and it was not for some 
 time, in * Who was it put wisdom on the bee, 
 teaching her the direction of the fields of the 
 air, and the home way to the hive on hillside 
 or in glen; or who showed the salmon to 
 leave the depths of the sea, and come up 
 narrow streams ; or who gave the raven the 
 old wisdom of the hills?' . . that I recog- 
 nised an unconscious iterance of Bacon's 
 noble measure : ' Who taught the raven in 
 a drowth to throw pebbles into an hollow 
 tree where she spied water, that the water 
 
 38 
 
might rise so as she might come to it ? Who The 
 taught the bee to sail through such a vast sea Lords of 
 of air, and to find the way from a field in Wisdom - 
 flower a great way off to her hive? Who 
 taught the ant to bite every grain of corn 
 that she burieth in her hill, lest it should take 
 root and grow ? ' 
 
 In Ross, I was told by a man of the Gair- 
 loch, they speak ... in a folk-tale, I think 
 he said, but possibly colloquially ... of the 
 bees as ' lords of wisdom ' or ' the little kings 
 of wisdom.' It is a fine phrase, that . . . the 
 lords of wisdom : and not one to forget. 
 
 Oftenest, however, the allusions to the bee 
 are, doubtless, to its * knowingness ' rather 
 than to its ' wisdom ' ; its skill in tracking 
 the pathless ways, its intuition of the hour 
 and season, of the way of the wind, of the 
 coming of rain, of gathering thunder. 
 
 But I recall from childhood a memory of 
 another kind : though I cannot say, now, 
 how much is old thought drowned in dreams, 
 or how much is due to the ceaseless teller of 
 tales who croons behind the heart and whispers 
 the old enchantment in the twilights of the 
 mind. 
 
 One day when the young Christ was nine 
 years old he saw Mary walking by a thicket. 
 He ran and hid in the thicket, and sent three 
 
 39 
 
The wishes of love to her, and gave to each the 
 
 Lords of beat of two wings and the pulse of song. 
 
 ora ' The first rose on wings of blue and sank into 
 
 the sky, carrying a prayer of Mary. The 
 
 second rose on white wings and fled seawards 
 
 by the hills of the west, carrying a hope of 
 
 Mary. The third rose on wings of green, 
 
 and sank to the grasses, carrying a dream of 
 
 Mary. 
 
 Then a voice came from the thicket: a 
 voice so sweet as to send the birds to the 
 branches . . . chuireadh e na Keoin 'an 
 crannaibh : 
 
 ' The Yellow Star, O Mary, to the bird of the blue 
 
 wing! . . . 
 
 The rainbow, O Mary, to the white bird ! . . . 
 The wild bee, O Mary, to the green bird ! . . ' 
 
 At that, Mary worshipped. * O God in the 
 thicket/ she said, ' sweet the songs and great 
 the beauty. But lo ! the birds are gone.' 
 Then Christ came out of the thicket, and 
 took her hand. ' Mother,' said the child, ' no 
 trouble to your heart, dear, because of the 
 Yellow Star. Your prayer was that my 
 Father would not forget His secret promise. 
 The sun is steadfast, and so I say that the 
 Yellow Star is set upon your prayer. And 
 no trouble to your heart, Mother, because 
 
 40 
 
of the Rainbow to the white bird : for your The 
 hope was for the gates of the west and the Lords of 
 hidden gardens of Peace : and even now the Wisdom, 
 gates are open, and spices and balms are on 
 the green wave that flows the long way east 
 of the sun and west of the moon. But 
 as to the wild bee, Mother, of that I cannot 
 speak.' 
 
 At that, Mary was sad, for she knew that 
 when a Druid of the east had told her to give 
 her son the friendship of the wind, of the 
 blown dust, of the grass, of the leaf, and of 
 the wild bee, she had done all those things 
 but the last. So she stood and wept. 
 
 Then the young Christ, her son, called 
 to a bee that was among the foam-white 
 pastures. 
 
 * What was your dream, Mother ? ' he 
 said. 
 
 ' My dream,' said Mary, 'was that I should 
 know death at the last, for in the flesh I am 
 a woman, and that of me that is mortal de- 
 sire th death.' 
 
 So Christ asked the wild bee. But the bee 
 said, * Can you see the nine hundred and 
 ninety-nine secret roads of the air ? ' 
 
 6 No/ said the child. 
 
 ' It is on one of these roads,' said the wild 
 bee, 'that Mary's dream went.' 
 
The So when Mary, sad at heart, but in this 
 
 Lords of thing only, went back to the house where 
 
 Wisdom, gj^ dwelt an( j m ade ready the supper for 
 
 that day's end, Christ gave friendship to the 
 
 wild bee, and became a bee, and floated above 
 
 the pastures. And when he came home at 
 
 twilight he knew all the secrets of the little 
 
 people of the air. 
 
 That night, after the meal was done, he 
 stood looking at Mary and Joseph. 
 
 6 1 have known many wisdoms,' he said, 
 ' but no wisdom like the wisdom of the wild 
 bee. But I have whispered to them a secret 
 thing, and through the years and the ages 
 they will not forget. And some of the 
 children of men shall hear the wild bees, 
 and many shall call upon them ; and to that 
 little clan of the unwise and foolish, as they 
 shall ever be accounted, I will send the wild 
 bees of wisdom and of truth.' 
 
 And Joseph said, ' Are the bees then so 
 wise?' 
 
 But Mary whispered : ' I do not think it is 
 of the wild bees of the pastures that the Christ 
 my son speaks, but of the wild bees of the 
 Spirit.' 
 
 Christ slept, and put his hand in Mary's, 
 and she had no fear : and that of her which 
 was of heaven deepened in joy, and that of 
 
 42 
 
her which was mortal had peace. But Joseph The 
 lay awake, and wondered why to a little clan Lords of 
 of those held foolish and unwise should come, Wisdom ' 
 as secret wings in the dark, the sound and 
 breath of an ancient wisdom. 
 
 43 
 
THE WAYFARER 
 
 ' This bright one who is Joy . . . ' 
 The Katha Upanishad. 
 
 * . . . then Salome asked of Him, 
 "How then may the woman dwell 
 with the man ?" And Jesus answered 
 her : " Eat all fruit save that which is 
 bitter." 'Clement of Alexandria. 
 
 AMONG those in the home-straths of Argyll 
 who are now grey, and in the quiet places of 
 whose hearts old memories live green and 
 sweet, there must be some who recall that 
 day when a stranger came into Strath Nair, 
 and spoke of the life eternal. 
 
 This man, who was a minister of God, was 
 called James Campbell. He was what is 
 called a good man, by those who measure the 
 soul by inches and extol its vision by the 
 tests of the purblind. He had rectitude of 
 a kind, the cold and bitter thing that is not 
 the sunlit integrity of the spirit. And he 
 had the sternness that is the winter of a 
 
 44 
 
frozen life. In his heart, God was made in The 
 
 the image of John Calvin. Wayfarer. 
 
 With this man the love of love was not 
 even a dream. A poor strong man he was, 
 this granite-clasped soul ; and the sunlight 
 faded out of many hearts, and hopes fell away 
 to dust before the blight of the east wind of 
 his spirit. 
 
 On the day after his coming to Strath Nair, 
 the new minister went from cottage to cottage. 
 He went to all, even to the hill-bothy of 
 Peter Macnamara the shepherd; to all save 
 one. He did not go to the cottage of Mary 
 Gilchrist, for the woman lived there alone, 
 with the child that had been born to her. In 
 the eyes of James Campbell she was evil. 
 His ears heard, but not his heart, that no 
 man or woman spoke harshly of her, for she 
 had been betrayed. 
 
 On the morning of the Bell, as some of the 
 old folk still call the morrow of the Sabbath, 
 the glory of sunlight came down the Strath. 
 For many days rains had fallen, hours upon 
 hours at a time ; or heavy, dropping masses 
 of vapour had hung low upon the mountains, 
 making the peaty uplands sodden, and turning 
 the grey rocks into a wet blackness. By day 
 and by night the wind had moaned among the 
 corries along the high moors. There was one 
 
 45 
 
The sound more lamentable still : the incessant m&h- 
 
 Wayfarer. fog of the desolate, soaked sheep. The wind 
 in the corries, on the moors, among the pines 
 and larches ; the plaintive cruel sorrow of the 
 wandering ewes ; never was any other sound 
 to be_heard, save the distant wailing of cur- 
 lews.} Only, below all, as inland near the 
 coast one hears continuously the murmur of 
 the sea, so by night and day the Gorromalt 
 Water made throughout the whole reach of 
 Strath Nair an undertone as of a weary 
 sighing. 
 
 But before nightfall on Saturday the rain 
 ceased, and the wet wind of the south sud- 
 denly revolved upon itself beyond the spurs 
 of Ben Maiseach. Long before the gloaming 
 had oozed an earth -darkness to meet the fall- 
 ing dark, the mists had lifted. One by one, 
 moist stars revealed hollows of violet, which, 
 when the moon yellowed the fir-tops, disclosed 
 a vast untravelled waste of blue, wherein slow 
 silent waves of darkness continuously lapsed. 
 The air grew full of loosened fragrances ; most 
 poignantly, of the bog-myrtle, the bracken, 
 and the resinous sprays of pine and larch. ' 
 
 Where the road turns at the Linn o' Gorro- 
 malt there is an ancient disarray of granite 
 boulders above the brown rushing water. 
 Masses of wild rose grow in that place. On 
 
 46 
 
this June gloaming the multitudinous blooms The 
 were like pale wings, as though the fabled Wayfarer, 
 birds that live in rainbows, or the frail 
 creatures of the falling dew, had alit there, 
 tremulous, uncertain. 
 
 There that evening, the woman, Mary 
 Gilchrist, sat, happy in' the silenqes of the 
 dusk. While she inhaled the fragrance of 
 the wild roses, as it floated above the per- 
 sistent green odour of the bent and the wet 
 fern, and listened to the noise of Gorromalt 
 Water foaming and surging out of the linn, 
 she heard steps close by her. Glancing side- 
 long, she saw 'the new minister,' a tall, 
 gaunt man, with lank, iron-grey hair above 
 his white, stern, angular face. 
 
 He looked at her, not knowing who she was. 
 
 Mary Gilchrist did not speak. Her face, 
 comely before, had become beautiful of late. 
 * It 's the sorrow,' said the Strath folk simply, 
 believing what they said. 
 
 Perhaps the dark eyes under the shadowy 
 hair deepened. The minister, of course, 
 could not see this, could not have noted so 
 small a thing. 
 
 ' God be with you,' he said at last in Gaelic, 
 and speaking slow and searchingly ; * God be 
 with you. This is a fine evening, at last.' 
 
 ' God be with you, too, Mr. Campbell.' 
 47 
 
The ' So ; you know who I am ? ' 
 
 Wayfarer. F or sure, sir, one cannot live alone here 
 among the hills and not know who comes and 
 who goes. What word is there, sir, of the 
 old minister ? Is he better ? ' 
 
 6 No. He will never be better. He is old.' 
 
 When he spoke these words, James Camp- 
 bell uttered them as one drover answers 
 another when asked about a steer or a horse. 
 Mary Gilchrist noticed this, and with a barely 
 audible sigh shrank a little among the granite 
 boulders and wild roses. 
 
 The minister hesitated ; then spoke again. 
 
 'You will be at the hill - preaching to- 
 morrow ? If fine, the Word will be preached 
 on the slope of Monanair. You will be 
 there ? ' 
 
 'Perhaps.' 
 
 He looked at her, leaning forward a little. 
 Her answer perturbed him. The Rev. James 
 Campbell thought no one should hesitate 
 before the free offering of the bitter tribulation 
 of his religion. Possibly she was one of that 
 outcast race who held by Popish abominations. 
 He frowned darkly. 
 
 ' Are you of the true faith ? ' 
 
 ' God alone knows that.' 
 
 ' Why do you answer me like that, woman? 
 There is but one true faith.' 
 
 48 
 
' Mr. Campbell, will you be for telling me The 
 this ? Do you preach the love of God ? ' Wayfarer. 
 
 ' I preach the love and hate of God, woman ! 
 His great love to the elect, his burning wrath 
 against the children of Belial.' 
 
 For a minute or more there was silence 
 between them. The noise of the torrent filled 
 the night. Beyond, all was stillness. The 
 stars, innumerous now, flickered in pale un- 
 certain fires. 
 
 At last Mary Gilchrist spoke, whispered 
 rather : 
 
 ' Mr. Campbell, I am only a poor woman. 
 It is not for me to be telling you this or that. 
 But for myself, I know, ay, for sure, I know 
 well, that everything God has to say to man 
 is to be said in three words and these were 
 said long, long ago, an' before ever the Word 
 came to this land at all. An' these three 
 words are, " God is love." 
 
 The speech angered the minister. It was 
 for him to say what was and what was not 
 God's message to man, for him to say what 
 was or was not the true faith. He frowned 
 blackly awhile. Then, muttering that he 
 would talk publicly of this on the morrow, 
 was about to pass on his way. Suddenly he 
 turned. 
 
 ' What will your name be ? If you will tell 
 
 D 49 
 
The me your name and where you live, my good 
 
 Wayfarer, woman, I will come to you and show you 
 what fearful sinfulness you invite by speak- 
 ing of God's providence as you do.' 
 
 ' I am Mary Gilchrist. I live up at the 
 small croft called Annet-bhan.' 
 
 Without a word, Mr. Campbell turned on 
 his heel, and moved whitheraway he was 
 bound. He was glad when he was round the 
 bend of the road, and going up the glen. 
 God's curse was heavy on those who had 
 made iniquity their portion. So this was the 
 woman Gilchrist, whom already that day he 
 had publicly avoided. A snare of the Evil 
 One, for sure, that wayside meeting had been. 
 
 It had angered the new minister to find 
 that neither man nor woman in Strath Nair 
 looked upon Mary Gilchrist as accursed. A 
 few blamed ; all were sorrowful ; none held 
 her an outcast. To one woman, who replied 
 that Mary was the sinned against, not the 
 sinner, that black misfortune had been hers, 
 Mr. Campbell answered harshly that the All- 
 wise God took no store by misfortune that 
 at the last day no shivering human soul could 
 trust to that plea. Even when John Mac- 
 allum, the hill-grieve, urged that, whether 
 Mr. Campbell were right or wrong, it was 
 clear nothing could be done, and would it not 
 
 50 
 
be wisest for one and all to let bygones be The 
 bygones, each man and woman remembering Wayfarer, 
 that in his or her heart evil dwelled somewhere 
 even then the minister was wrought to 
 resentment, and declared that the woman, 
 because of her sin, ought to be driven out of 
 the Strath. 
 
 In the less than two days he had been in 
 Strath Nair this man had brought upon that 
 remote place a gloom worse than any that 
 came out of the dark congregation of the 
 clouds. In many a little croft the bright 
 leaping flame of the pine-log or the comfort- 
 able glow of the peats had become lurid. 
 For the eye sees what the heart fears. 
 
 Thus it was that when the Sabbath came 
 in a glory of light, and the Strath, and the 
 shadowy mountains, and the vast sun-swept 
 gulfs of blue overhead took on a loveliness 
 as though on that very morrow God had re- 
 created the earth and the universe itself, thus 
 it was the people of the Strath were downcast. 
 Poor folk, poor folk, that suffer so because of 
 the blind shepherds. 
 
 But before that glory of a new day was 
 come, and while he was still striding with 
 bitter thoughts from the place where he had 
 left the woman Gilchrist, Mr. Campbell had 
 again cause for thought, for perplexed anger. 
 
 5' 
 
The As he walked, he brooded sullenly. That 
 
 Wayfarer, this woman, this lost one, had ventured to 
 bandy words with him ! What was she, a 
 fallen woman, she with an unhallowed child 
 up there at her croft of Annet-bhan, that she 
 should speak to him, James Campbell, of 
 what God's message was ! 
 
 It was then that he descried a man sitting 
 on a fallen tree by the side of the burn which 
 runs out of the Glen of the Willows. He 
 could not discern him clearly, but saw that he 
 was not one of the Strath-folk with whom he 
 had talked as yet. The man seemed young, 
 but weary; yes, for sure, weary, and poor 
 too. When he rose to his feet in courteous 
 greeting, Mr. Campbell could see that he 
 was tall. His long fair hair, and a mien and 
 dress foreign to the straths, made him appear 
 in the minister's eyes as a wayfarer from the 
 Lowlands. 
 
 'God be with you. Good evening,' Mr. 
 Campbell exclaimed abruptly, in the English 
 tongue. 
 
 The man answered gravely, and in a low, 
 sweet voice, ' God be with you.' 
 
 'Will you be for going my way ?' the minister 
 asked again, but now in the Gaelic, for he 
 knew this would be a test as to whether the 
 man was or was not of the Strath. 
 
 52 
 
* No. I do not go your way. Peradventure The 
 
 you will yet come my way, James Camp- Wayfarer, 
 bell.' 
 
 With a start of anger the minister took a 
 step closer. What could the man mean, he 
 wondered. Still, the words were so gently 
 said that hardly could he put offence into 
 them. 
 
 ' I do not understand you, my good man,' 
 he answered after a little; 'but I see you 
 know who I am. Will you be at the preach- 
 ing of the Word at Monanair to-morrow ; or, 
 if wet, at the house of God close by the Mill 
 o' Gorromalt ? ' 
 
 ' What Word will you preach, James Camp- 
 bell ? ' 
 
 6 Look you, my man, you are no kinsman of 
 mine to be naming me in that way. I am 
 Mr. Campbell, the minister from Strathdree.' 
 
 * What Word will you preach, then, Mr. 
 Campbell ? ' 
 
 ' What Word ? There is but one Word. 
 I will say unto you, as unto all men who 
 hearken unto me on the morrow, that the 
 Lord God is a terrible God against all who 
 transgress His holy law, and that the day of 
 repentance is wellnigh gone. Even now it 
 may be too late. Our God is a jealous God, 
 who doth not brook delay. Woe unto those 
 
 53 
 
The who in their hearts cry out, "To-morrow! 
 
 Wayfarer. To-morrow!"' 
 
 For a brief while the man by the wayside 
 was still. When he spoke, his voice was 
 gentle and low. 
 
 ' Rather do I believe the Word to be that 
 which the woman Mary Gilchrist said to you 
 yonder by the linn : that God is love.' 
 
 And having said this, he moved quietly 
 into the dusk of the gloaming, and was lost 
 to sight. 
 
 James Campbell walked slowly on his way, 
 pondering perplexedly. Twice that evening 
 he had been told what the whole message of 
 God was an evil, blasphemous, fair-seeming 
 doctrine, he muttered, more fit for the accursed 
 courts of her who sitteth upon seven hills than 
 for those who are within the sound of the 
 Truth. And how had the false wisdom come ? 
 He smiled grimly at the thought of the wanton 
 and the vagrant. 
 
 Before he slept that night he looked out 
 upon the vast and solemn congregation of the 
 stars. Star beyond star, planet beyond planet, 
 strange worlds all, immutably controlled, un- 
 relinquished day or night, age or aeon, shep- 
 herded among the infinite deeps, moving 
 orderly from a dawn a million years far off 
 to a quiet fold a million years away, sheep 
 
 54 
 
shepherded beyond all change or chance, or The 
 no more than the dust of a great wind blow- Wayfarer, 
 ing behind the travelling feet of Eternity 
 what did it all mean? Shepherded starry 
 worlds, or but the dust of Time ? A Shepherd, 
 or Silence ? But he who had the wisdom of 
 God, and was bearer of His message, turned 
 to his bed and slept, muttering only that man 
 in his wretchedness and sin was unworthy of 
 those lamps suspended there to fill his dark- 
 ness for sure, for God is merciful, but also to 
 strike terror and awe and deep despair into 
 the hearts of that innumerable multitude who 
 go down daily into a starless night. 
 
 And when he had thought thus, he slept : 
 till the fading bitterness of his thought was 
 lost too in the noise of Gorromalt Water. 
 
 ii 
 
 A great stillness of blue prevailed on the 
 morrow. When sunrise poured over the 
 shoulder of Ben Maiseach, and swept in 
 golden foam among the pines of Strath Nair, it 
 was as though a sweet, unknown, yet anciently 
 familiar pastoral voice was uplifted a voice 
 full of a solemn music, austerely glad, rejoic- 
 ing with the deep rejoicing of peace. 
 
 The Strath was as one of the valleys of 
 55 
 
The Eden. The rain-washed oaks and birches 
 
 Wayfarer. wore a g a j n their virginal green ; the mountain- 
 ash had her June apparel ; the larches were like 
 the delicate green showers that fall out of the 
 rainbow upon opal-hued clouds at sunsetting ; 
 even the dusky umbrage of the pines filled 
 slowly with light, as tidal sands at the flow. 
 
 The Gorromalt Water swept a blue arm 
 round the western bend of the Strath ; brown, 
 foam-flecked, it emerged from the linn, tumul- 
 tuous, whirling this way and that, leaping, 
 surging. 
 
 In the wet loneroid, in the bracken, in the 
 thyme -set grass, the yellow-hammers and 
 stonechats remembered, perhaps for the last 
 time in this summer-end, their nesting songs, 
 their nestling notes. 
 
 From every green patch upon the hills the 
 loud, confused, incessant bleating of the ewes 
 and four-month lambs made a myriad single 
 crying a hill-music sweet to hear. 
 
 From the Mill o' Gorromalt, too, where little 
 Sheen Macrae danced in the sunlight, to the 
 turfed cottage of Mary Gilchrist high on the 
 furthest spur of Maiseach, where her child 
 stretched out his hands to catch the sunrays, 
 resounded the laughter of children. The blue 
 smoke from the crofts rose like the breath of 
 stones. 
 
 56 
 
A spirit of joy moved down the Strath. The 
 Even thus of old, men knew the wayfaring Wayfarer. 
 Breath of God. 
 
 It was then the new minister, the Inter- 
 preter, brought to the remembrance of every 
 man and woman in the Strath that the Lord 
 God moveth in shadow, and is a jealous God. 
 
 The water-bell of the Mill, that did duty on 
 the preaching Sabbaths, began its monotonous 
 call. Of yore, most who heard it had gone 
 gladly to its summons. When John Camp- 
 bell had preached the Word, all who heard 
 him returned with something of peace, with 
 something of hope. But now none went save 
 unwillingly ; some even with new suspicions 
 the one against the other, some with bitter 
 searchings, some with latent dark vanities that 
 could not bloom in the light. 
 
 And so the man delivered the Gospel. He 
 * preached the Word,' there, on the glowing 
 hillside, where the sun shone with imperious 
 beauty. Was it that while he preached, the 
 sky darkened, that the hillside darkened, the 
 sunglow darkened, the sun itself darkened ? 
 That the heart of each man and woman dark- 
 ened, that the mind of each darkened, that 
 every soul there darkened, yea, that even the 
 white innocence of the little children grew 
 dusked with shadow ? And yet the sun shone 
 
 57 
 
The as it had shone before the tolling of the bell. 
 
 Wayfarer. No cloud was in the sky. Beauty lay upon 
 the hillside ; the Gorromalt Water leaped and 
 danced in the sunlight. Nothing darkened 
 from without. The darkening was from 
 within. 
 
 The Rev. James Campbell spoke for an 
 hour with sombre eloquence. Out of the deep 
 darkness of his heart he spoke. In that hour 
 he slew many hopes, chilled many aspirations, 
 dulled many lives. The old, hearing him, 
 grew weary of the burden of years, and yet 
 feared release as a more dreadful evil still. 
 The young lost heart, relinquished hope. 
 
 There was one interruption. An old man, 
 Macnamara by name, a shepherd, rose and 
 walked slowly away from where the congre- 
 gation sat in groups on the hillside. He was 
 followed by his two collie dogs, who had sat 
 patiently on their haunches while the minister 
 preached his word of doom. 
 
 ' Where will you be going, Peter Macna- 
 mara ? ' called Mr. Campbell, his voice dark 
 with the same shadow that was in the affront 
 on his face. 
 
 ' I am going up into the hills,' the old man 
 answered quietly, 'for I am too old to lose 
 sight of God.' Then, amid the breathless 
 pause around him, he added : ' And here, 
 
 58 
 
James Campbell, I have heard no word of The 
 Him.' Wayfarer. 
 
 'Go,' thundered the minister, with out- 
 stretched arm and pointed finger. ' Go, and 
 when thine hour cometh thou shalt lament in 
 vain that thou didst affront the most High 
 God!' 
 
 The people sat awed. A spell was upon 
 them. None moved. The eyes of all were 
 upon the minister. 
 
 And he, now, knew his power, and that he 
 had triumphed. He spoke to or of now one, 
 now another poor sinner, whose evil-doing was 
 but a weakness, a waywardness to guide, not 
 a cancer inassuageable. Suddenly he remem- 
 bered the woman, Mary Gilchrist. 
 
 Of her he spoke, till all there shuddered at 
 her sin, and shuddered more at the chastise- 
 ment of that sin. She was impure ; she dwelt 
 in the iniquity of that sin ; she sought neither 
 to repent nor to hide her shame. In that great 
 flame of hell, which she would surely know, 
 years hence a hundred years hence a thou- 
 sand, ten thousand, immeasurably remote in 
 eternity she would know then, when too 
 late, that God was, indeed, a jealous God in 
 unending torture, in ceaseless 
 
 But at that moment a low hush grew into a 
 rising crest of warning. The wave of sound 
 
 59 
 
The spilled at the minister's feet. He stared, 
 
 Wayfarer, frowning. 
 
 * What is it ? ' he asked. 
 
 ' Hush ! ' some one answered. 6 There 's the 
 poor woman herself coming this way.' 
 
 And so it was. Over the slope beyond 
 Monanair Mary Gilchrist appeared. She was 
 walking slowly, and as though intent upon 
 the words of her companion, who was the 
 wayfarer with whom Mr. Campbell had 
 spoken at the Glen of the Willows. 
 
 ' Let her come,' said the minister sullenly. 
 Then, suddenly, being strangely uplifted by 
 the cold night- wind in his heart, he resumed 
 his bitter sayings, and spoke of the woman 
 and her sin, and of all akin to her, from Mary 
 Magdalene down to this Mary Gilchrist. 
 
 ' Ay ! ' he cried, as the newcomers ap- 
 proached to within a few yards of where he 
 stood, ' and it was only by the exceeding 
 overwhelming grace of God that the woman, 
 Mary Magdalene, was saved at all. And often, 
 ay, again and again, has the thought come to 
 me that the mercy was hers only in this life.' 
 
 A shudder went through the Strath-folk, 
 
 but none stirred. A sudden weariness had 
 
 come upon the minister, who had, indeed, 
 
 spoken for a long hour and more. With a 
 
 hurried blessing that sounded like a knell, for 
 
 60 
 
the last words were, ' Be ware the wrath of The 
 God,' Mr. Campbell sat back in the chair Wayfarer, 
 which had been carried there for him. 
 
 Then, before any moved away, the stranger 
 who was with Mary Gilchrist arose. None 
 knew him. His worn face, with its large 
 sorrowful eyes, his long, fair hair, his white 
 hands, were all unlike those of a man of the 
 hills ; but when he spoke it was in the sweet 
 homely Gaelic that only those spoke who had 
 it from the mother's lips. 
 
 ' Will you listen to me, men and women of 
 Strath Nair ? ' he asked. He was obviously a 
 poor man, and a wanderer ; yet none there 
 who did not realise he was one to whom 
 all would eagerly listen. And so the man 
 preached the Word. He, too, spoke of God 
 and man, of the two worlds, of life and death, 
 of time and eternity. As he spoke, it was as 
 though he used, not the symbols of august 
 and immortal things, but, in a still whiteness 
 of simplicity, revealed these eternal truths 
 themselves. 
 
 Was it that as he preached, the sky, the 
 hillside, the sunglow, the sun itself lightened ; 
 that the heart of each man and woman 
 lightened, that the mind of each lightened, 
 that even the white innocence of the little 
 children grew more fair to see ? 
 
 61 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
The The stranger, with the eyes of deep love 
 
 Wayfarer, and tenderness so deep and tender that 
 tears were in women's eyes, and the hearts 
 of men were strained spoke for long. Simple 
 words he spoke, but none had ever been so 
 moved. Out of the white beauty of his soul 
 he spoke. In that hour he brought near to 
 them many fair immortal things, clothed in 
 mortal beauty ; stilled shaken hearts ; uplifted 
 hopes grown dim or listless. The old, hear- 
 ing him " ] ed to think that age was but the 
 lamp-lit ( reached at last, with, beyond 
 the dim s..ctit, the shining windows of home. 
 The young grew brave and strong ; in the 
 obscure trouble of each heart, new stars had 
 arisen. 
 
 There was but one interruption. When 
 the wayfarer said that they who could not 
 read need not feel outcast from the Word 
 of God, for all the Scriptures could be inter- 
 preted in one phrase simply, ' God is love '- 
 the minister, James Campbell, rose and passed 
 slowly through the groups upon the hillside. 
 
 ' Listen,' said the wayfarer, ' while I tell 
 you the story of Mary Magdalene.' 
 
 Then he told the story again as any may 
 read it in the Book, but with so loving words, 
 and with so deep a knowledge of the pitiful- 
 ness of life, that it was a revelation to all 
 
 62 
 
there. Tears were in the heart as well as in The 
 
 the eyes of each man and woman. Wayfarer. 
 
 Then slowly he made out of the beauty of 
 all their listening souls a wonderful thing. 
 
 Mary Gilchrist had kneeled by his side, 
 and held his left hand in hers, weeping gently 
 the while. A light was about her as of one 
 glorified. It was, mayhap, the light from 
 Him whose living words wrought a miracle 
 there that day. 
 
 For as he spoke, all there came tcr? ^w and 
 to understand and to love. Ear) f * they 
 
 understood and loved, with a new *. _. K , a new 
 understanding. And not one there but felt 
 how sacred and beautiful in their eyes was 
 the redemption of the woman Mary Gilchrist, 
 who was now to them as Mary Magdalene 
 herself. 
 
 The wayfarer spoke to one and all by name, 
 or so to each it seemed ; and to each he spoke 
 of the sobbing woman by his side, and of the 
 greatness and beauty of love, and of the piti- 
 fulness of the sorrow of love, and of the two 
 flames in the shame of love, the white flame 
 and the red. The little green world, he said, 
 this little whirling star, is held to all the stars 
 that be, and these are held to every universe, 
 and all universes surmised and yet undreamed 
 of are held to God Himself, simply by a little 
 
 63 
 
The beam of light a little beam of Love. It is 
 
 Wayfarer. Love that is the following Thought of God. 
 And it is love that is of sole worth in human 
 life. This he said again and again, in familiar 
 words become new and wonderful. Thus it 
 was that out of the pain and sorrow, out of 
 the passion and grief and despair of the heart 
 of the woman Mary, and out of the heart of 
 every man, woman, and child in that place, 
 he wrought a vision of the Woman Mary, of 
 Mary the Mother, of Mary whose name is 
 Love, whose soul is Love, whose Breath is 
 Love, who is wherever Love is, sees all and 
 knows all and understands all ; who has no 
 weariness, and who solves all impurities and 
 evils, and turns them into pure gold of love ; 
 who is the Pulse of Life, the Breath of 
 Eternity, the Soul of God. 
 
 And when he had ceased speaking there 
 was not one there no, not one who could 
 see the glory of the beauty of his face because 
 of the mist of tears that were in all eyes. 
 
 None saw him go. Quietly he moved down 
 the path leading to the green birches at the 
 hither end of the Glen of the Willows. There 
 he turned, and for a brief while gazed silent, 
 with longing blue eyes full of dream, and 
 pale face stilled by the ecstasy of prayer. 
 
 All stood beholding him. Slowly he raised 
 64 
 
his arms. Doves of peace flew out of his The 
 heart. In every heart there a white dove of Wayfarer, 
 peace nested. Mayhap he who stood under 
 the green birches heard what none whom he 
 had left on the hill-slope could hear the 
 whispering, the welling, the uplifted voice of 
 spirits redeemed from their mortal to their 
 immortal part. 
 
 For suddenly he smiled. Then he bowed 
 his head, and was lost in the green gloom, 
 and was seen no more. 
 
 But in the gloaming, in the dewy gloaming 
 of that day, Mary Gilchrist walked alone, with 
 her child in her arms, in the Glen of the 
 Willows. And once she heard a step behind 
 her, and a hand touched her shoulder. 
 
 * Mary ! ' said the low, sweet voice she knew 
 so well, ' Mary ! Mary ! ' 
 
 Whereupon she sank upon her knees. 
 
 * Jesus of Nazareth, Son of God ! ' broke 
 from her lips in faint, stammering speech. 
 
 For long she kneeled trembling. When 
 she rose, none was there. White stars hung 
 among the branches of the dusky green pyra- 
 mids of the Glen of the Willows. On the 
 hillside beyond, where her home was, the 
 moonlight lay, quiet waters of peace. She 
 bowed her head, and moved out of the 
 shadow into the light. 
 
 E 65 
 
QUEENS OF BEAUTY 
 
 'Empires become drifted sand, and the queens 
 of great loveliness are dust. They shall not come 
 again, towered cities of the sands, palaces built 
 upon the sea, roses of beauty that blossomed for 
 an hour on the wind that is for ever silently and 
 swiftly moving out of darkness and turning a 
 sunlit wing and then silently moving into dark- 
 ness again. But the wind is changeless in that 
 divine continual advent, and the sunlit wing is 
 that immortal we call Beauty, the mirage hung 
 upon the brows of life.' The Ancient Beauty. 
 
 THERE is a Gaelic saying both in legendary 
 lore and folk-song of the beauty of the 
 "Woman of Greece,' of 'the Greek woman,' 
 na mna Greuig. 
 
 It is, of course, Helen of Troy who is meant. 
 I do not know if that story of love and death 
 and beauty has survived in some measure 
 intact that is, perfect in episode if fragment- 
 ary in sequence or if it exist only in a few 
 luminous words, or merely in allusion. Some- 
 thing of the old romance of Hellas, something 
 of the complex Roman mythus, have come 
 down on the Gaelic tide, little altered, or 
 
 66 
 
altered only in the loss of the temporal and Queens of 
 accidental. But they are sometimes hard to Beauty, 
 trace, and often are as lost in the old Gaelic 
 legendary lore as the fragrance of moor-rose 
 or orchis in the savour of wild-honey. 
 
 4 Who were the three most beautiful women 
 of old?' I asked a man, a native of the Gairloch 
 of Ross, one day last summer. We were old 
 friends, for we had often been out on the sea 
 together in rough weather and calm, and I 
 had ever found him somewhat like the sea in 
 this, that he could be silent all day and yet 
 never be other than companionable, and had 
 mysterious depths, and sudden revelations. 
 So I was always glad to sail with him when 
 the chance came. 
 
 On this day it was between Gometra and 
 Ulva, where the fierce tides of the Atlantic 
 sometimes cast up cones from the pine- woods 
 of Maine, or driftwood of old wreckage from 
 the Labrador headlands we were in a bata- 
 da-chroinn, or wherry, and spun before the 
 wind as though swept along by the resistless 
 hand of Manan himself. The sea was a 
 \ jubilation of blue and white, with green in the 
 shaken tents of the loud-murmuring nomad 
 host of billows. The sky was cloudless in 
 the zenith, and a deep blue ; of a pale blue in 
 the north and east ; but in the south a moun- 
 
Queens of tainous range of saffron and salmon - pink 
 Beauty. cloud rose solidly above the horizon -cutting 
 isles. A swirl of long-winged terns hung 
 above a shoal of mackerel fry, screaming as 
 they splashed continually into the moving 
 dazzle. Far in the blue depths overhead I 
 saw two gannets, like flecks of foam that the 
 wind had lifted. And that was all : not 
 another bird, not a boat, no trailed smoke 
 down by lona or over by Tiree, not a single 
 sail, suspended on the horizon like the wing 
 of the fabled condor that moves but does not 
 stir. 
 
 ' Who were the three most beautiful women 
 of old?' 
 
 He took a time to answer. He stared down 
 into the green water slipping past, as though 
 seeking there some floating image of a dim, 
 beautiful face, as though listening for some 
 sigh, some cadence, from the old lost world, 
 from Tir-fo-Tuinne, the Land -under -wave, 
 the drowned sleeping world with the moving 
 walls of green and the moving roof of blue. 
 
 ' I do not know,' he said at last. ' I do not 
 remember. There are many songs, many 
 tales. But I 've heard this : that there will 
 be seven lovelinesses of beauty in a woman's 
 beauty . . . the beauty of Malveen, the 
 daughter of Oisein ; the beauty of Deir- 
 
 68 
 
athray, the love of Finn ; the beauty of Yssul Queens of 
 of the North ; the beauty of Emer, the wife Beauty, 
 of Cuchulain ; the beauty of Gwannole, the 
 Queen of the Saxons; the beauty of the 
 Greek woman, for whom all men strove and 
 died ; the beauty of the woman who came 
 out of the south.' And after he had spoken 
 I thought that in the first of these is the 
 beauty of sorrowful things ; and in the second, 
 the beauty of great love; and in the third, 
 the beauty of wildness ; and in the fourth, 
 the beauty of faith; and in the fifth, the 
 beauty lit at the torches of death ; and in the 
 sixth, the beauty that fires men to take up 
 spears and die for a name ; and in the seventh, 
 the beauty of the poets that take up harp and 
 sorrow and the wandering road. 
 
 Once before, elsewhere, I had asked this 
 question, and had a different answer, though 
 it held three names of those names now said. 
 ' Well, now,' said my informant, an old woman 
 of Arisaig, 'and who, they, but the Sweet 
 Love of the Sons of Usneach (Usna), and the 
 wife of the Hero of Madness, and the fair 
 Woman of Greece.' She knew all about 
 Deirdre, or Dearshul or Darshool, the beloved 
 of Finn, and the bride of the eldest of the 
 Sons of Usna ; and all about Emer, the wife 
 of Cuchulain, the hero of the Gael ; and of 
 
 69 
 
Queens of how the white beauty and great love of these 
 Beauty, women live for ever in song and story, and in 
 the passion of women's hearts and in the shaken 
 minds of men. But she knew nothing of the 
 fair woman of Greece/ nor of that land itself, 
 thinking indeed it was ' a great and glorious 
 town, a shining and a prosperous and kingly 
 town, in the southlands of Ispan (Spain).' 
 
 Of some of those of whom my boatman 
 spoke, he knew little. Of Malveen (Malmhin) 
 he knew only that her name sang like a shell 
 in the cadence of an old iorram, or boat-song, 
 of the Middle Isles: and he had heard the 
 story of Oisein and Malvina in Dr. Clerk's 
 Gaelic variant of Ossian, told often at this or 
 that ceilidh by the winter-fire. Darshul, or 
 Deirdre, he called Darathray ; the only occa- 
 sion on which I have heard the name of that 
 fair torch of beauty so given. Her story he 
 knew well. ( The best of all the tales that 
 are told,' he said. Of Yssul he knew nothing, 
 but that she was the love of a king's son, and 
 that she and Drostan lie below the foam of a 
 wild sea. Gwannole, the queen of the Saxons, 
 he knew to be Arthur's queen, and he had 
 heard of Mordred, king of the Picts, though 
 not of Lancelot. He knew Helen's name, 
 and had a confused memory of the names of 
 those who loved and died for her, and of the 
 
 70 
 
fate of Troy : all got from his mother, who Queens of 
 was the daughter of a minister of Inverness. Beauty. 
 He knew nothing of * the woman who came 
 out of the south.' When pressed, he said 
 with a smile, ' Her name will be Ashlyenn ' 
 (Aisling, a Dream), ' I 'm thinking.' But later 
 he spoke suddenly. It was when my thoughts 
 had wandered elsewhere, and when I was 
 watching the cloud-spray circling over the 
 Treshnish Isles, with two winds meeting : and 
 for a moment I could not recover the clue to 
 what lay in his words. 
 
 * Perhaps the woman out of the south would 
 be the woman of the woods, that Merlyn 
 loved, and who put him under spells of silence 
 and sleep. She had the wild beauty, they 
 say. She was not a woman of a man and a 
 woman, but the deathless one of the nameless 
 folk and a woodwoman. She is in songs and 
 tales. It may be that woman that had the 
 loveliness, for no man will ever have seen her 
 but will always sing of her.' 
 
 I think, however, that this last legendary 
 beauty is older, and more native to the western 
 Gael. I think, though it is only a surmise, 
 that if not Niamh, Oisein's beautiful love of 
 the other world, it must be of one to whose 
 surpassing beauty there is allusion in the most 
 ancient Gaelic chronicles, and of whom, doubt- 
 
Queens of less, the wandering bards of Eire and Alba 
 Beauty. long sang as of the Rose of Beauty. ' But 
 the fairest of the women who came into Erin 
 with the sons of Milidh was Feale, the wife of 
 Luaidh, son of that Ith who had been slain 
 by the Tuath de Danann, and who had lived 
 alone in the western regions of Espan, in an 
 inland valley, until she was wooed by Luaidh, 
 the son of Ith, surnamed Laidceann, for his 
 love of poetry : and men said concerning 
 Feale that she was too beautiful to live.' 
 
 In a verse rescued from oblivion by Alas- 
 dair Carmichael of Uist, these and other names 
 of beauty, pagan and mythological and Chris- 
 tian, are strangely blended. 
 
 Is tu gleus na Mnatha Sithe, 
 Is tu beus na Bride bithe, 
 Is tu creud na Moire mine, 
 Is tu gniomh na mnatha Greuig, 
 Is tu sgeimh na h'Eimir aluinn, 
 Is tu mein na Dearshul agha, 
 Is tu meann na Meabha laidir, 
 Is tu taladh Binne-bheul. 
 
 [Thine is the skill of the Fairy Woman, and the virtue of St. 
 Bridget, and the faith of Mary the Mild, and the gracious way of 
 the Greek woman, and the beauty oj lovely Emer, and the tenderness 
 oj hearts weet Deirdre, and the courage of Maev the Great Queen 
 (lit. the strong), and the charm of Mouth o' Music."] 
 
 The names stir. What a great thing in 
 beauty is this, that after kingdoms are fallen 
 
 72 
 
and nations are drifted away like scattered Queens of 
 leaves, and even heroic names are gone upon Beauty, 
 the wind, a memory of loveliness endures, as 
 a light that time cannot touch, as a fragrance 
 that death cannot reach. This is the immor- 
 tality of the poet's dream. It is a great 
 destiny to raise thrones and win dominions 
 and build kingly cities. But cities can be 
 ground into dust, and dominions can be as 
 palaces built upon the sea, and the highest 
 throne can become as the last yellow leaf 
 shaken in the winds of autumn. But great 
 beauty . . . that is a memory for ever. When 
 one of the queens of a troubling loveliness 
 dies, it is only as it were a mortal hour of 
 beauty that is gathered back into the night : 
 all of what is immortal passes into the dreams 
 of men, is the beauty beyond beauty in the 
 perfect song, the ineffable suspense in music. 
 It endures, that immortal memory, that im- 
 mortal dream. It is whispered and told and 
 communicated in every Spring. It is on every 
 wind of the west. 
 
 73 
 
ORPHEUS AND OISIN 
 
 ' They asked me if I had seen a 
 white fawn in my dreams, and 
 whether the trees of the secret 
 valley had advised me to love.' 
 CHATEAUBRIAND, Atala. 
 
 A FRIEND wrote to me some time ago to say 
 that he had seen a quaint tale in old Scots 
 called ' Orpheo and Heurodys.' I imagine 
 this to be the reprint in Laing's Remains of 
 Ancient Scottish Poetry. But, also, he asked 
 if I had come upon any Gaelic variant of the 
 tale of Orpheus and Eurydice. I had not, nor 
 have I. True, I have heard that a tale of one 
 Heurodys has been told, now here, now there. 
 But I have not met any who has heard it told. 
 That a variant of the story of Orpheus and 
 Eurydice survives, however, seems fairly cer- 
 tain. But one would suspect a modern deri- 
 vation, if it were too pat and retained too 
 strong a savour of the original. There can be 
 an erring on the other side also, however. 
 The late ferrymaster at lona once told an 
 English lady who was seeking for folklore 
 
 74 
 
(and made a book of her strange gleanings, for Orpheus 
 she had a singular method of gathering, in and Oisin. 
 that she would tell a tale and then ask if the 
 listener had ever heard of its like) that he 
 had a tale that would interest her ; for, he 
 said, though it was not of a king's son in the 
 ancient days who went to hell to seek his love, 
 his story was of one Christina Ross, who 
 believed she was loved by the prince of dark- 
 ness, and one day, sure enough, she was seen 
 no more. At that, her lover, Rory M'Killop, 
 the piper from Mull, disappeared too. But 
 months on months later he came again, and 
 said he had been in Gehenna : and that he 
 saw Christina and told her to follow his piping 
 and all would be well, but if she stopped to 
 take sup or bite, or called to him that he 
 should once look back, it would be o'er the 
 hills an' far away he would be, and she forlorn 
 for evermore. And the M'Killop had played 
 well, as he himself averred : none ever better. 
 But Kirsty Ross had stopped to pull a fine 
 red apple from a branch, and, forgetting, had 
 called to him, so that he had looked back 
 and the next moment there was a great gulf 
 between them, he on the edge of the world 
 again, and she there for ever, with a heap o' 
 dust in her hand. 
 
 And when I asked him afterwards why he 
 75 
 
Orpheus had told such a farrago of nonsense, for I 
 and Oisin. knew he had but given tongue to the moment's 
 whim, he said, ' What harm in that now ? . . . 
 for sure the lady had her story as she wanted, 
 and as for the truth, well, didn't Rory M'Killop 
 of Heiskir go off with Kirsty Ross, and come 
 back a year later, saying he had been in the 
 Americas, and his wife dead now, God rest 
 her.' 
 
 But I have wondered often if the ancient 
 Gaelic tale of Oisin and Niamh the later-life 
 tale of the Son of Fionn and his otherworld 
 love, in the days of his broken years and 
 gathered sorrows has not in it the heart of 
 the old Greek story. Rather, it may have in 
 it, not an echo, but a like strain of the primi- 
 tive mythopceic imagination : as the feather- 
 wrack on the rocky shores of Ithaka and that 
 gathered on Ultima Thule are one and the 
 same. 
 
 For Oisin, too, went to the otherworld to 
 gather love, and to bring back his youth ; but 
 even as Orpheus had to relinquish Eurydice and 
 youth and love, because he looked to take away 
 with him what Aidoneus had already gathered 
 to be his own, so Oisin, the Orpheus of the Gael, 
 had to come away from the place of defeated 
 dreams, and see again the hardness and bitter- 
 ness of the hitherworld, with age and death 
 
as the grey fniit on the tree of life. And if Orpheus 
 the end of the one is hidden for some say he and Oisin. 
 was slain by the jealous gods, who love not 
 that any soul should whisper the secret of 
 their mysteries, and some that he was de- 
 stroyed by the infuriated bacchanals, and some 
 that he wandered lonely till his sorrow came 
 over him like snow, so that he lay down be- 
 neath it and slept and was no more seen of 
 men so too is hidden the end of the other. 
 For Oisin did not dwell evermore in the plea- 
 sant land whither his youth had gone and he 
 to seek it, but came back to find the world 
 grown old, and all he had loved below the turf, 
 and the taunts of the monks of Patrick in his 
 ears, and the bell of Christ ringing in the 
 glens and upon the leas. Nor does any know 
 of his death, though the Gaels of the North 
 believe that he looked his last across the 
 grey seas from Drumadoon in Arran, where 
 that Avalon of the Gael lies between the 
 waters of Argyll and the green Atlantic wave. 
 It may well be that the old Greek tale of 
 Orpheus seeking Eurydice in the kingdom 
 of things ended and gathered, and the old 
 Gaelic tale of Oisin and Niamh, and the 
 mediaeval tale of Ponce da Leon, and the 
 folk-tale (told me again, for in one form or 
 another I have heard it often, a year-back on 
 
 77 
 
Orpheus green Lismore) of the shepherd of the isles 
 and Oisin. w ho loved a soulless, smiling woman of the 
 otherworld and followed his fay into the dark- 
 ness of the earth below a leafless thorn, and 
 was lost to the world for months, till he was 
 seen one May-day walking among the yellow 
 broom crowned with hawthorn and with a 
 rowan branch in his hand, smiling and dumb, 
 and with eyes cold as cold blue water it may 
 well be that these legendary tales are but the 
 ever-changing mortal utterance of what is 
 unchanging, the varying accent of the un- 
 varying desire of the soul, to recapture that 
 which has gone away upon the wind, or to 
 take from the brows of the wind of what is to 
 come the secret coronals of strange blossom 
 wet still with immortal dews. It may well 
 be that each is but an expression of the need 
 for youth, which is the passion of life, and the 
 instinct of the imagination to breathe itself 
 into a passionate moment of emotion, and 
 the impulse of all the emotions and all the 
 passions. 
 
 Orpheus loved, and Eurydice was gathered 
 untimely as a flower in its beauty ; but are we 
 not all lovers as Orpheus was, loving what is 
 gone from us for ever, and seeking it vainly in 
 the solitudes and wilderness of the mind, and 
 crying to Eurydice to come again ? And are 
 
 78 
 
we not all foolish as Orpheus was, hoping by Orpheus 
 the agony of love and the ecstasy of will to and Oisin. 
 win back Eurydice ; and do we not all fail, as 
 Orpheus failed, because we forsake the way of 
 the other world for the way of this world ? 
 
 Many of us, do we not love Niamh, and 
 come again from enchantment, and find all 
 things grown old, the apples of Avalon become 
 sere without and full of dust within ? Many 
 of us, do we not follow a fay who has stolen 
 our joy, to go crowned a brief while with 
 illusions, or to hold in nerveless hands the 
 disenchanted wand of the imagination ? Many 
 of us, are we not continually adventuring upon 
 a quest as futile as that of Ponce da Leon, 
 who, for the sake of a dream, was blind to the 
 other founts of youth that were within his 
 reach, and so forsook all that he might cross 
 the world to find what was in his own mind ? 
 
 Whether the story of Oisin, the Gaelic 
 Orpheus, be a wanderer from archaic mytho- 
 logy, or arose clanless among the Gaelic 
 hills from moonseed, as is said of the tufted 
 canna that floats its fairy snow-beards on the 
 moorland air matters little. The tale, at 
 least, has a beauty that is certainly its own. 
 Oisin, also, was the son of one who loved a 
 woman of the deathless folk ; for as the 
 Thracian king (Eagrus loved Calliope, of 
 
 79 
 
Orpheus the divine race, so Fionn, the Agamemnon 
 and Oisin. o f the Gael, loved one of the Hidden People 
 a daughter of the people of the mounds, as 
 we would say, of the Sidhe. Each became 
 the arch-poet of his race : both were taught 
 and inspired by divine genius, the Thracian 
 by Apollo, the Gael by Angus of the Sun- 
 locks Angus 6g, the Balder of the west. 
 
 The dwellers in the underworld and all the 
 great kings and lords in Hades knew the en- 
 chantment of the lute of Orpheus ; and when 
 Oisin went to the otherworld with Niamh, 
 the sleeping kings and the spellbound heroes 
 and all the secret clans of Midir were thrilled 
 with wonder, and rejoiced with proud laughter. 
 The one went out with the Argonauts, and 
 crossed the foam of the Symplegades, and 
 beheld war as a pageant : the other went with 
 the clans of the Fianna, and crossed the wild 
 waters of the Moyle, and at Moytura saw 
 great tides of spears and swords flashing 
 upon a sea of red, and beheld nations meet 
 and dwindle and perish, so that when the sun 
 set it was as though it dragged away the land 
 in great cloths of crimson, dripping like a veil 
 over the untraversed sea and all the battle- 
 worn shores of the west. 
 
 Both loved with great, unforgetting love, 
 and in the end knew weariness and death : 
 
 80 
 
and the one, it is said, died in a Thracian Orpheus 
 valley, calling upon his lost love in the under- an( * Oisin. 
 world ; and the other, it is said, died by 
 Drumadoon in the isle of Arran of Argyll, 
 old and blind, with his hand in the hand of 
 Malveen, but on his lips this sigh to his long 
 lost, forbidden love . . . O Niamh, thy kisses 
 were sweet as the blue joyous wine of the wave 
 to the Sea-wind. 
 
 Some of the oral legends have it that the 
 mother of Oisin was a mortal, bewitched by a 
 woman of the Sidhe : others, that she was 
 herself Fionn's leannan-shee, or fairy-love . . . 
 and I have heard her called Niamh, Moan, 
 Liban, and other sweet perilous names. 
 
 But the common legend 1 is that Fionn 
 wearied of his white love, and wedded a 
 daughter of a great lord of the Ultonians. 
 Then 'the other' put the spell of the Fath-fith 
 on her, so that she was changed to a hind of 
 the hill. 
 
 When her hour was come, she swam the 
 deep water of Loch-nan-'ceall that is near 
 Arisaig in West Argyll, to the little isle in 
 it that is called Sanndraigh. 
 
 1 So well summarised, in particular, by Mr. Alasdair Cir- 
 michael and an idea of how difficult a summary sometimes is 
 may be gained from the fact that the late Mr. Campbell of Tiree 
 had gathered and sent to Mr. Carmichael no fewer than fourteen 
 variants of the First Song of Oisin, the Song to his Hind-Mother. 
 F 8l 
 
Orpheus And there her child and Fionn's child was 
 and Oisin. born. When the swoon of the birthing was 
 past, she forgot, and that of her which was a 
 hind licked the brow of her young. Then she 
 remembered, and licked no more ; but, look- 
 ing, saw that though the enchantment lay 
 upon her still, the spell was broken for her 
 little son. But hair like a fawn's hair grew 
 upon the brow she had licked : and that is 
 why the youngest and fairest of Fionn's sons 
 was given the name of Oisin, the Fawn. 
 
 The child was taken to his father's Dun, and 
 the hind leapt away through the bracken, and 
 swam the loch, and took to the hills for the 
 fear of Bran and Luath and Breacleit, Fionn's 
 great hounds, was upon her. 
 
 Oisin and his mother did not meet again 
 for years upon years. One day, when passing 
 from boyhood to youth, he went with the 
 hunters to the hill of the mountain -deer, but 
 because of a mist he strayed and found him- 
 self at last alone and in a solitary place, a 
 green glen set among leaning blue hills, with 
 water running from a place of high piled 
 rocks. He saw a hind pasturing there, more 
 graceful and beautiful than any deer he had 
 ever seen : so great was its beauty that he 
 looked at it as a girl who had never seen an 
 image in water might look at her mirrored face 
 
 82 
 
in a pool. Then the spirit of the huntsman Orpheus 
 stirred within him, and he lifted his spear. and Oisin. 
 The hind looked at him, with sad wistful 
 eyes, brown as hill -water, and slowly he 
 lowered the spear. 
 
 6 Thrust me not with thy spear, Oisin,' said 
 the hind, ' for I am thy mother that bore thee 
 on the isle Sanndraigh in Loch-nan-Ceall. 
 Alone I see thee, and hungry and weary. 
 Come back with me now to my home, fawn 
 of my heart.' 
 
 They went slowly, side by side, across the 
 green grass to a great rock that in slope was 
 the height of nine men, and was smooth as 
 the blade of a sword. The wife of Fionn 
 breathed upon it, and a hollow was come, and 
 when they had gone in there was no hollow 
 but only a great rock with a slope that was in 
 size the height of nine men and was as smooth 
 as the blade of a sword. 
 
 Then, to his exceeding joy, Oisin saw that 
 his mother was spellbound no more, but was 
 a woman, and lovely and young. When they 
 had kissed long with great love, she gave him 
 food to eat and sweet heather- ale to drink, 
 and then sang songs of a music sweeter than 
 any he had ever heard. 
 
 For three days it was thus with them, with 
 the sleep of peace at night, where was no 
 
 83 ' 
 
Orpheus night, and the waking of joy at morn, where 
 and Oisin. was no mO rn, but where Time lay asleep, as 
 the murmur of the unresting sea in the curved 
 hollows of a shell. 
 
 Then Oisin remembered Fionn and the 
 hunters, and said he would go out to see them, 
 and set their sorrow at rest. But before he 
 went out of that spellbound place he made a 
 song for his mother, the first of the songs of 
 Oisin, that would be a sian to guard her from 
 the hounds and spears of Fionn and his 
 hunters. Then once more the hollow opened 
 in the smooth cliff of the great rock, and he 
 was in the glen again among the blue hills, 
 and saw a kestrel flying at a great height 
 as though scorning the spread greenness 
 of the land and the spread greyness of the 
 wrinkled sea. And when Oisin was come 
 again to the Dun of Fionn, there was great 
 wonder as well as great joy, for it was not 
 three hours as it seemed, nor yet three days, 
 as he thought, but three years, that he had 
 been in the secret place of the rocks, and 
 known the food and drink and music of 
 enchantment. 
 
 In truth, this tale, as the tale of the other 
 Orpheus, is but an ancient and familiar strain 
 which is the burthen or refrain of unnum- 
 bered songs of the spirit, in every race, in 
 
 84 
 
every age: as in every literature, in every Orpheus 
 age, one may hear the same sigh as in the old and Oisin. 
 Scots song : 
 
 ' For I 'm wearied wi' hunting, 
 An' fain would lie doon/ 
 
 These old myth -covering tales whether we 
 call them Greek or Aryan or what else are 
 as the grass that will grow in any land : and 
 the grass of the Vale of Tempe or on the 
 slope of Helicon does not differ from the 
 grass in green Aghadoe or that on the scarps 
 of Hecla by the Hebrid seas. It was but 
 the other day I told an eager listener a tale 
 of one Faruane (Fear-uaine, a ' green man ') 
 who lived 6 in the old ancient days ' in a great 
 oak, and had so lived for generations for 
 a honeycomb of ages, as the phrase runs 
 and did nothing but watch the clouds sail 
 above the branches and the shadows glide 
 between the tree-boles, and live on sun- 
 light and dew. Then one day, as he was 
 walking lightly on the moss, he saw another 
 world come into the old untroubled wood, 
 and that ' world ' was a woman. She was 
 young as Niamh the undying, and beautiful 
 as Emer the fair, and bewitching as Liban of 
 the spells; and Faruane grew weary of his 
 calm immortal dream, and longed unwittingly 
 for sorrow and death, for he did not know 
 
 85 
 
Orpheus these companions of the soul, nor even that 
 and Oisin. he longed, nor could he know that a soul was 
 other than a perishable thing of the earth as 
 he himself was. So he moved softly in the 
 sun-warmed dusk of the branches, and came 
 upon the girl (whose name was Moan) among 
 the fern where she stood like a fawn with wide 
 eyes. He was too beautiful for her to fear, 
 and too beautiful for her not to love, and 
 though Moan knew that to give herself in love 
 to a wood-spirit was to live three years in a 
 dream and then die in body and to go away 
 in soul, she put from her all desire of the 
 things she knew and let Faruane kiss her on 
 the lips and take her hand and lead her into 
 the green glades, to be forgotten, beyond the 
 murmuring forest, save in a song that lived 
 like a breath of remembered passion in the 
 gloamings of a thousand years. 
 
 But for three years Faruane and Moan 
 knew the Spring rapture and the Summer 
 joy and the Autumn peace and the Winter 
 sleep of the children of earth. She remem- 
 bered nothing, for her soul was filled with 
 beauty ; and she desired nothing, for her mind 
 was hushed with dreams and honied with 
 content. 
 
 But when she died, which was as a child 
 falling asleep in a shadowy place of moss and 
 
 86 
 
rustling leaves, Faruane faded from the light, Orpheus 
 
 and his death was as a sunbeam passing from an( * Oisin. 
 
 a green branch ; for he had seen her soul stoop 
 
 and kiss him and go away to its own place, 
 
 where he could not follow. But they had 
 
 daughters, and these lived to the fulness of 
 
 the green hour, which is calm and unaging 
 
 through many generations of our fevered 
 
 mortal day. They in turn bore children to 
 
 other sons of the greenness, the semblance of 
 
 Moan but in all else of the seed of Faruane ; 
 
 so that they are like the offspring of the clan 
 
 of men, but fear them and love them not, and 
 
 may not dwell with them nor near them, nor 
 
 wed with them. But they love the shadows 
 
 of leaves, and the sun ripens them as fruit, 
 
 and they are forgotten, and have no dreams 
 
 but the dream that is their life. 
 
 And what, then, is this fantasy of a dream- 
 ing mind in the west but kin to the sweet 
 fantasy of a dreaming mind in Hellas of old 
 though the island poet, or singer of Arcady 
 with a silver flute, making beauty in the hot 
 noon by a plane-shadowed fount, as a child 
 makes a coronal of daisies and wild thyme, 
 called Moan Merop, and sung of her wood- 
 lover as Dry as ? For both knew of the shy 
 green god of the oak, and had seen the off- 
 spring of him and the mortal woman of his 
 
 87 
 
Orpheus love, the fawn-eyed, withdrawing Dryads of 
 
 and Oisin. the haunted trees. 
 
 It is in this sense that the things of the 
 imagination do not die, but change with the 
 changing hours as the wild parsley and the 
 hyacinth come into the woods at the first 
 flute-notes of April, and were as young last 
 year, or will be under the yet unfallen dews, 
 as they were a thousand years ago, in Arcadian 
 valleys or in the glens of the Gael. 
 
 88 
 
Children of Water 
 
 ' 0, hide the bitter gifts 
 of our lord Poseidon.' 
 ARCHILOCHUS OP PAROS. 
 
CHILDREN OF WATER 
 
 CUILIDH-MHOIRE 
 
 SEA-MAGIC 
 
 FARA-GHAOL 
 
 SORROW ON THE WIND 
 
 THE LYNN OF DREAMS 
 
 MXYA 
 
CHILDREN OF WATER 
 
 'Ritraghad 
 's ri lionadh . . . 
 Mar a bha 
 Mar a tha 
 Mar a bhitheas 
 Gu brath 
 Ri tragadh 
 'S ri lionadh.' 
 
 (Ebbing and flowing ... as it was, 
 as it is, as it shall be evermore the 
 ebb and the flow.) 
 
 STUDENTS of Gaelic mythology will remember 
 that Tuan who, under the grey cloud and by 
 the whispering rushes of the west, gave out 
 the same ancient wisdom as Pythagoras gave 
 by Ionian Kroton, or as Empedocles gave by 
 Sicilian Acragas remembered his many trans- 
 formations. He had been, he said, an eagle 
 and a stag and a salmon in deep waters, and 
 had known other changes. In like manner 
 the Sicilian sophist remembered that he had 
 been ' a youth and a maiden and a bush and a 
 bird and a gleaming fish in the sea ' ; and the 
 
Children greatest of Greek mages declared that again 
 of Water. an( j again he had lived in a changed body, 
 as old raiment discarded or new raiment 
 donned. 
 
 But I am not now concerned with this 
 problem, that, like a wind at twilight, has 
 troubled with furtive shadows the waters of 
 many minds. As with a greater problem, it 
 may be folly to believe it, but a worse folly to 
 hold it incredible. And, too, in the end, when 
 we are tired of the tide-play of the mind and 
 sink into the depths and silences and think 
 from there, what are the thousand words that 
 say no against the one word that says yes ? I 
 recall from childhood a story of a man who, 
 for the gain of a great wisdom, sold to the 
 Prince of Pride the whole substance and reach 
 of his mortal period, retaining only a single 
 minute out of all this incalculable treasure. 
 He lived to the stipulated hour, and at the 
 end of his hundredth year knew all that the 
 wisdom of man has gathered out of the silence 
 in which he moves, shadow of an eddy of wind 
 between the two vast Alps of Time and Death. 
 And on the shore of the last minute of the 
 last hour of the hundredth year when he had 
 sighed, and said there was no more to know, 
 and that the last dream had been dreamed 
 he remembered his one minute he had kept 
 
 92 
 
unbartered. So he took it, and held it before Children 
 his eyes, as we hold a crystal lens : and in that f Water, 
 minute he saw backwards a thousand years, 
 and beheld the long trail of his wandering 
 lives ; and saw forward, and beheld the ways 
 and the cross-ways, the pillar of dust and the 
 leaning banner of mist ; and saw downward, 
 and beheld many empires in the caverns of old 
 seas, and below these, outworn ages, and below 
 these, space and stars ; and saw upward, and 
 beheld human wisdom like dew, a thin vapour, 
 vanishing, and then a congregation of mighty 
 spirits and dominions, princes of the elements, 
 overlords of destiny, throneless and throned 
 gods, and then a majesty of light, and then 
 seven heavens like seven stairs, and then a 
 myriad blaze of world-apart wings and an 
 illimitable swinging of uncountable suns, and 
 knew, then, that his wisdom had but crossed 
 the first marches of infinitude, had but reached 
 the leaning horizon of eternity. In the hun- 
 dred years he had learned all that the pride 
 of the mind could teach, and it was as 
 nothing: in the one minute of his soul he 
 had seen behind and beyond, beneath and 
 above, and in knowing the nothingness of 
 knowledge had entered the inheritance of 
 wisdom. 
 
 I think, rather, of another interpretation 
 93 
 
Children of the old wisdom of these dreamers of time 
 of Water. an d change. Are they not prophets of that 
 restless spirit which is the heritage of many 
 troubled souls, that instinct for spiritual 
 wandering, that deep hunger for experience, 
 even if it be bitter, the longing for things 
 known to be unattainable, the remembrance 
 which strives for re-birth, the insatiable thirst 
 for the beauty of mirage, the brooding discon- 
 tent with or fiery rebellion against the tyranny 
 of accident and circumstance ? To these, it is 
 not enough that one life be the guerdon of 
 birth : not even that many lives slip from 
 level to level : not even that the accident of 
 sex be as varied as the accident of race or the 
 accident of conditions. They would know 
 flight, as the seamew or the osprey: they 
 would know the waterways, as the creatures 
 of the wave : they would know the wind, as 
 the leaf on the bough knows it, as the grass 
 knows it, as the grey thistle in a stony place : 
 they would know, even, the rapture of the 
 upbuilded bow along the bastions of storm, or 
 where the arch leans in moist rose and green 
 and purple over still streams and inland valleys 
 would know, even, the elemental passions 
 of wind and rain and of the unloosened fires. 
 There is no limit to this troubled desire. It is 
 the madness, perhaps, of many minds dwelling 
 
 94 
 
habitually, and from generation to generation, Children 
 among things hard to endure, in the grey of Water, 
 countries of rain and wind : it is the madness, 
 also, of some in whose hearts is not and never 
 can be any peace, the sons and daughters of 
 longing, the children of thirst. 
 
 For in truth there is a restlessness unlike 
 any other restlessness in the vagrant spirit of 
 man : a disquietude that is of the soul as well 
 as of the body, the tossed spray of forgotten 
 and primitive memories. And yet, perhaps, 
 all this obscure tumult in the dark is only the 
 dream of those unquiet minds who are the 
 children of water. 
 
 Long ago, when Manannan, the god of 
 wind and sea, offspring of Lir, the Oceanus 
 of the Gael, lay once by weedy shores, he 
 heard a man and a woman talking. The 
 woman was a woman of the sea, and some say 
 that she was a seal : but that is no matter, for 
 it was in the time when the divine race and 
 the human race and the soulless race and the 
 dumb races that are near to man were all one 
 race. And Manannan heard the man say : 
 * I will give you love and home and peace.' 
 The sea- woman listened to that, and said : 
 ' And I will bring you the homelessness of 
 the sea, and the peace of the restless wave, 
 and love like the wandering wind.' At that 
 
 95 
 
Children the man chided her, and said she could be no 
 of Water, woman, though she had his love. She laughed, 
 and slid into green water. Then Manannan 
 took the shape of a youth, and appeared to 
 the man. * You are a strange love for a sea- 
 woman,' he said : ' and why do you go putting 
 your earth-heart to her sea-heart ? ' The man 
 said he did not know, but that he had no 
 pleasure in looking at women who were all 
 the same. At that Manannan laughed a low 
 laugh. 'Go back,' he said, "and take one 
 you 11 meet singing on the heather. She 's 
 white and fair. But because of your lost love 
 in the water, I '11 give you a gift.' And with 
 that Manannan took a wave of the sea and 
 threw it into the man's heart. He went back, 
 and wedded, and, when his hour came, he 
 died. But he, and the children he had, and 
 all the unnumbered clan that came of them, 
 knew by day and by night a love that was 
 tameless and changeable as the wandering 
 wind, and a longing that was unquiet as the 
 restless wave, and the homelessness of the 
 sea. And that is why they are called the 
 Sliochd-na : mara, the clan of the waters, 
 or the Treud-na-thonn, the tribe of the 
 sea-wave. 
 
 And of that clan are some who have turned 
 their longing after the wind and wave of the 
 
mind the wind that would overtake the Children 
 waves of thought and dream, and gather them f Water, 
 and lift them into clouds of beauty drifting 
 in the blue glens of the sky. 
 
 How are these ever to be satisfied, children 
 of water ? 
 
 97 
 
CUILIDH MHOIRE 
 
 , e#7ro\cw, 
 
 SOPHOCLES. 
 
 WITHIN a hundred years ago many of the 
 islefolk, and not only in the more remote 
 places, openly or furtively practised what are 
 called pagan rites. Many of these dealt with 
 water, more particularly with the water of the 
 sea : for to the people in the west the sea is 
 an ever present power to be feared, to be pro- 
 pitiated, to be beguiled if possible, to be 
 regarded as a hard foster-mother, perhaps : 
 hardly to be loved. I have never heard any 
 definition of the sea more impressive than that 
 of a fisherman of the isle of Ulva, whom I 
 knew. ' She is like a woman of the old tales 
 whose beauty is dreadful,' he said, ' and who 
 breaks your heart at last whether she smiles 
 or frowns. But she doesn't care about that, or 
 whether you are hurt or not. It's because 
 she has no heart, being all a wild water.' 
 
 I have read often of the great love of the 
 isles men for the sea. They love it in a sense 
 
of course, as the people of the land loveCuilidh 
 uplands and wild moors, and the movements Mhoire. 
 of clouds over stony braes or above long 
 pastures by low shores and estuaries. Nor 
 are they happy away from it. How could 
 they be, since the wave is in their hearts. 
 Men and women who are born to the noise 
 of the sea, whose cradles have rocked to the 
 surge or croon of the tides, who have looked 
 on the deep every day in every season of 
 every year, could not but feel towards it as 
 a shepherd feels towards the barest hills, as 
 a forester feels for the most sombre woods, 
 as the seed-sower and the narrower feel for 
 monotonous brown lands which swell upward 
 till they bear the rounded white clouds like 
 vast phantom flowers. In this sense they love 
 it, and truly. Some love it for itself, and its 
 beauty. A few love it with passion, feel its 
 spell irresistible, magical. 'A wild mare, a 
 mocking beautiful woman, and the blue sea in 
 foam, for the joy of these I would give the 
 world and time,' says a Gaelic poet. But it 
 is not of the exceptions I speak : it is of the 
 many. These do not love what they have so 
 much cause to dread ; what holds so many little 
 fortunes in so great and loose a clasp ; what 
 shuts off from so many desires ; what has so 
 common a voice of melancholy ; what makes 
 
 99 
 
Cuilidh an obvious destiny take the measure of fatality, 
 Mhoire. an implacable doom. For them, when the 
 sea is not a highway, it is a place of food, the 
 Cuilidh Mhoire or Treasury of Mary, as the 
 Catholic islesmen of the Southern Hebrides 
 call the sustenance-giving waters. When 
 neither, it is most likely to be a grave, the 
 cold drifting hearths of the dead. 
 
 As to those I speak of, the people in many 
 parts were good Christians for most days, and 
 then one day other selves hidden under taught 
 faiths and later symbols would stand disclosed. 
 Above all, when certain days of traditional 
 sanctity recurred, it was customary to perform 
 rites of a druidic or pagan remembrance, in 
 the face even of priests of a Faith that has 
 ever turned stern eyes on all rites of the eager 
 spirit of man save its own. And what the 
 people were then, in the many, they still are 
 in the few ; though now for the most part 
 only where the Great Disenchantment has not 
 yet wholly usurped the fading dominion of 
 the Great Enchantment. 
 
 It was the custom, then, and still is in some 
 isles, for mothers to wet brow or finger of 
 their new-born in the flow of the tide at the 
 end of the third week of the child's life. The 
 twenty-first day, if a Sunday, was held to be 
 the most fortunate, and a Thursday next to 
 
 100 
 
it : but a Friday was always to be avoided, Cuilidh 
 and a Saturday was held in some fear, unless Mhoire. 
 the child was dark in hair and eyes and colour. 
 It was above all needful to see that this wave- 
 baptism happened when the tide was at the 
 flow. If it were done at the ebb, woe to that 
 child and that mother: soon or late the 
 * baptized ' would be called, to sink in deep 
 gulfs and be homeless and no more seen 
 and, in the west, for the dead to have no green 
 grave for sleep-covering is a nakedness of 
 sorrow ill to endure for those left to mourn. 
 
 I remember, when I was a child, being 
 taken to have tea in the cottage of one Giorsal 
 Macleod, in Armadale of Sleat, who had lost 
 both husband and son through this sea-hallow- 
 ing rite having been done at the ebb. Her 
 husband was a young man, and had never 
 spoken to her of the fear of his mother, who 
 through a misjudgment in a time of weakness 
 and fever had ' waved ' him after the turn of 
 the ebb. But one day when Annra Macleod 
 came in to find Giorsal crying because unwit- 
 tingly she had done a like thing, he laughed 
 at her folly, and said that for himself he cared 
 no whit one way or the other whether the 
 child were dipped in this hour or in that. 
 But before the month was out, and on a calm 
 night and just as the herring had risen, 
 
 101 
 
Cuilidh Annra's feet tangled in the nets, which fell 
 Mhoire. b ac k w jth him, and he sank into the strong 
 ebb, and was sucked away like a fading 
 shadow. And seven years from that day little 
 Seoras, the boy, when fishing for piocach in 
 the haven, stumbled from the coble's heavy 
 bow and into the swift-slipping greenness. 
 He was good at the swimming, and could 
 easily have saved himself on so calm a day 
 and with the coble not a fathom-reach off: 
 but he was an ebb-child, and his fate was on 
 him, and he was called out to deep water and 
 death. His mother saw this. And when she 
 spoke of her sorrow she used invariably the 
 words, 'A Dhia (O God), 'twas a long-laid 
 death for my cold darling : 'twas I that did it 
 with that dip in the ebb, I not knowing the 
 harm and the spell, A cuisilin mo gkraidh, A 
 m'ulaidh 's magh ! (O pulse-let of my love, O 
 my treasure and joy !) ' 
 
 In those days I speak of, the people used 
 to have many sea-rites, and, almost in all the 
 isles, on La Chaluim-Chille (St. Columba's 
 Day) in particular. Offerings of honey-ale or 
 mead, fluid porridge, kale-soup, precious bread 
 even, were given to the god of the sea. As 
 the darkness of Wednesday night gave way 
 to dawn on Maundy Thursday, as Mr. Car- 
 michael relates in his beautiful Carmina 
 
 102 
 
 \ 
 
Gadelica, the man deputed by the islefolk Cuilidh 
 would walk into the sea up to his waist, and Mhoire. 
 then, while he poured out the offering, would 
 chant 
 
 A Dhe na mara 
 Cuir todhar 's an tarruinn 
 Chon tachair an talaimh 
 Chon bailcidh dhuinn biaidh. 
 
 ' O god of the sea, 
 Put weed in the drawing wave 
 To enrich the isle-soil, 
 To shower on us food/ 
 
 'Then those behind the offerer took up the 
 chant and wafted it along the seashore on 
 the midnight air, the darkness and the rolling 
 of the waves making the scene weird and 
 impressive.' 
 
 That I have not seen ; and now I fear the 
 god of the sea has few worshippers, and knows 
 no scattered communes of bowed chanters at 
 midnight. 
 
 But this, though also I have not seen, I 
 know of at first hand. A man and his three 
 sons, on an island which I will speak of only 
 as south and east of the Minch, went secretly 
 on the eve of St. Columba's Day a year ago, 
 and took a pail of milk from the byres, and a 
 
 103 
 
Cuilidh jug of running water of a well-spring, and a 
 Mhoire. small loaf of bread from the oven, and a red 
 faggot from the fire held in a cleft stick. The 
 youngest son threw the fire into the sea, 
 crying ' Here 's fire for you ! ' And the other 
 sons poured on the black flood the surf- white 
 milk and the rain-grey water, crying ' Here 's 
 clean water for you ! ' and ' Here 's the kindly 
 milk for you ! ' And the father threw the 
 loaf of bread on the wave, and cried ' Peace 
 to your hunger ! ' 
 
 That was all, and they did it secretly, and 
 the sons (it is said) half to please their father. 
 Only one or two neighbours knew of it, and 
 they silent before the minister ; but somehow 
 it came to the man's ears, and like most of 
 his kind he was angry at a thing beyond him 
 and his understanding, and spoke in contempt 
 to one wiser than himself (I do not doubt), 
 and threatened him with a public exhorting 
 
 from the pulpit, so that Mr. M sullenly 
 
 promised no more to do the thing his fore- 
 bears had done for generation upon genera- 
 tion. 
 
 ' After all, the minister was right,' said 
 some one to me, who had heard the tale: 
 ' for Mr. M was only holding by a super- 
 stition.' 
 
 I did not make the obvious retort, but said 
 104 
 
simply that it was better to hold by old things Cuilidh 
 of beauty and reverence than to put a blight Mhoire. 
 on them. 
 
 I do not say the minister was wholly wrong. 
 He spoke according to his lights. Doubtless 
 he had in remembrance some such passage as 
 that in Deuteronomy where the ban is put 
 upon any who will suffer his son or his 
 daughter to go through fire, or upon any that 
 draw omen from the cry of fowls, or upon the 
 interpreter of signs. And compelled by that 
 stubborn thraldom to the explicit word which 
 has been at once the stern strength and the 
 spiritual failure of all the Calvinistic denomi- 
 nations (in our religion-harried Scotland at 
 least), he spoke in numbed sympathy and 
 twilight knowledge. 
 
 Since, I have tried to learn if Mr. M 
 
 had knowledge of the ancient meanings of 
 that sea-rite, and if other words, or chant, or 
 urnuigh-mhara or sea-prayer, had been used 
 by his elders. But, as yet, I have not learned. 
 I have wondered often if this broken and all 
 but silent rite were a survival of a custom 
 before ever St. Colum was heard of. The 
 bread offering and that of the milk are easy 
 of understanding. But why should one give 
 fresh water from an earth- spring to that salt, 
 unstable wilderness ; why offer to it a flame of 
 
 105 
 
Cuilidh fire, to it whose pale crescents of light or 
 
 Mhoire. moving green lawns beneath swaying cataracts 
 
 are but the glittering robe over a cold heart, 
 
 than which no other is so still everlastingly 
 
 in an ancient and changeless cold ? 
 
 1 06 
 
SEA-MAGIC 
 
 ' Manan mil air sloigh . . .' 
 
 IN one of the remotest islands of the Hebrides 
 I landed on a late afternoon in October a year 
 ago. There was no one on the island except an 
 old man, who was shepherd for the fourscore 
 sheep which ate the sweet sea-grass from Bel- 
 tane till Samhain : l one sheep for each year 
 of his life, he told me, ' forby one, and that 
 will be right between them an' me come 
 Candlemas next.' He gave me water and 
 oatcake, and offered to make me tea, which 
 I would not have. I gave him the messages 
 I had brought from the distant mainland of 
 the Lews, and other things ; and some small 
 gifts of my own to supplement the few needs 
 and fewer luxuries of the old islander. Murdo 
 Maclan was grateful, with the brief and 
 simple gladness of a child. By mistake a 
 
 1 ' Beltane till Samhain ' : 1st May till Summerend (31st 
 October). 
 
 107 
 
Sea- little mouth-organ, one of those small un- 
 
 Magic. tuneful instruments which children delight in 
 and can buy for a few pence, was in my pack- 
 age, along with a ' poke ' of carvies, those little 
 white sweets for buttered bread dear to both 
 young and old though even they, like all 
 genuine products of the west, great and small, 
 are falling away in disuse ! The two had been 
 intended by me for a small lass, the grand- 
 child of a crofter of Loch Roag in the wester- 
 side of the Lews ; but when the yacht put in 
 at the weedy haven, where scart and gillie- 
 breed and tern screamed at the break of silence, 
 I heard that little Morag had ' taken a longing 
 to be gone,' and after a brief ailing had in 
 truth returned whence she had come. 
 
 And for the moment neither snuff nor 
 tobacco, neither woollen comforter nor knitted 
 hose, could hold Murdo as did that packet of 
 carvies (for the paper had loosened, and the 
 sugary contents had swarmed like white ants) 
 and still more that sixpenny mouth-organ. I 
 saw what the old man eagerly desired, but was 
 too courteous and well-bred even to hint : and 
 when I gave him the two things of his longing 
 my pleasure was not less than his. I asked 
 him why he wanted the cruit-bheul, which 
 was the nearest I could put the Gaelic for 
 the foreign toy, and he said simply that it 
 
 1 08 
 
was because he was so much alone, and often Sea- 
 at nights heard a music he would rather not Magic, 
 be hearing. ' What would that be ? ' I asked. 
 After some hesitation he answered that a 
 woman often came out of the sea and said 
 strange foreign words at the back of his door, 
 and these, he added, in a whinnying voice like 
 that of a foal ; came, white as foam ; and went 
 away grey as rain. And then, he added, ' she 
 would go to that stroked rock yonder, and put 
 songs against me, till my heart shook like a 
 tallow-flaucht in the wind.' 
 
 Was there any other music ? I asked. Yes, 
 he said. When the wind was in the west, and 
 rose quickly, coming across the sea, he had 
 heard a hundred feet running through the wet 
 grass and making the clover breathe a breath. 
 ' When it 's a long way off I hear the snatch 
 of an air, that I think I know and yet can 
 never put name to. Then it 's near, an there 's 
 names called on the wind, an' whishts an' all. 
 Then they sing an' laugh. I Ve seen the 
 sheep standing their forelegs on the slit 
 rocks that crop up here like stony weeds 
 staring, and listening. Then after a bit they 'd 
 go on at the grass again. But Luath, my dog, 
 he'd sit close to me, with his eyes big, an' 
 growling low. Then I wouldn't be hearing 
 anything : no more at all. But, whiles, some- 
 
 109 
 
Sea- body would follow me home, piping, and till 
 
 Magic. the very door, and then go off laughing. Once, 
 a three-week back or so, I came home in a 
 thin noiseless rain, and heard a woman-voice 
 singing by the fire-flaucht, and stole up soft 
 to the house-side ; but she heard the beat of 
 my pulse and went out at the door, not look- 
 ing once behind her. She was tall and white, 
 with red hair, and though I didn't see her face 
 I know it was like a rock in rain, with tears 
 streaming on it. She was a woman till she 
 was at the shore there, then she threw her 
 arms into the wind an' was a gull, an' flew 
 away in the lowness of a cloud.' 
 
 While I was on the island the wind had 
 veered with that suddenness known to all who 
 sail these seas. A wet eddy swirled up from 
 the south-east, and the west greyed, and rain 
 fell. In a few minutes clouds shaped them- 
 selves out of mists I had not seen and out of 
 travelling vapours and the salt rising breaths 
 of the sea. A long wind moved from east to 
 west, high, but with its sough falling to me 
 like a wood-echo where I was. Then a cloudy 
 rain let loose a chill air, and sighed with a 
 moan in it : in a moment or two after, great 
 sluices were opened, and the water came 
 down with a noise like the tide coursing the 
 lynns of narrow sea-lochs. 
 
 1 10 
 
To go back in that falling flood would be Sea- 
 to be half-drowned, and was needless too : so Magic. 
 I was the more glad, with the howling wind 
 and sudden gloom of darkness and thick rain, 
 to go in to Murdo's cabin, for it was no more 
 than that, and sit by the comfortable glow of 
 the peats, while the old man, happy in that 
 doing, made tea for me. 
 
 He was smiling and busy, when I saw his 
 face cloud. 
 
 ' Will you be hearing that ? ' he said looking 
 round. 
 
 ' What was it ? ' I answered, for I thought 
 I had heard the long scream of the gannet 
 against the waves of the wind high above us. 
 
 Having no answer, I asked Murdo if it was 
 the bird he meant. ' Ay, it might be a bird. 
 Sometimes it 's a bird, sometimes it 's a seal, 
 sometimes it 's a creature of the sea pulling 
 itself up the shore an' makin' a hoarse raughlin 
 like a boat being dragged over pebbles. But 
 when it comes in at the door there it is always 
 the same, a tall man, with the great beauty on 
 him, his hands hidden in the white cloak he 
 wears, a bright, cold, curling flame under the 
 soles of his feet, and a crest like a bird's on 
 his head.' 
 
 I looked instinctively at the door, but no 
 one stood there. 
 
 111 ^x 
 
 UNIVf 
 
 ? jr 
 
Sea- 'Was the crest of feathers, Murdo?' I 
 
 Magic. asked, remembering an old tale of a mes- 
 senger of the Hidden People who is known 
 by the crest of cuckoo-feathers that he wears. 
 6 No,' he said, ' it wasn't. It was more like 
 white canna blowing in the wind, but with a 
 blueness in it.' 
 
 ' And what does he say to you ? ' 
 
 * His say is the say of good Gaelic, but with 
 old words in it that I have forgotten. The 
 mother of my mother had great wisdom, and 
 I Ve heard her using the same when she was 
 out speaking in the moonlight to them that 
 were talking to her.' 
 
 6 What does he tell you, Murdo ? ' 
 
 * Sure, seldom he has anything to say. He 
 just looks in the fire a long time, an' then goes 
 away smiling.' 
 
 ' And who did you think it was ? ' 
 'Well, I thought it might be Mr. Mac- 
 alister, him as was drowned on St. Bride's 
 day, the minister over at Uiseader of Harris ; 
 I've heard he was a tall, fine man, an' a 
 scholar, an' of great goodness an' fineness. 
 And so I asked him, the second time he came, 
 if may be he would be Mr. Macalister. He 
 said no, an' laughed the bit of a laugh, and 
 then said that good man's bones were now 
 lying in a great pool with three arches to it, 
 
 I 12 
 
deep in the sea about seven swims of a seal Sea- 
 from Eilean Mhealastaidh, the island that lies Magic, 
 under the shadow of Griomaval on the main- 
 land of the Lews. 1 
 
 ' An' at that/ added Murdo, ' I asked him 
 how he would be knowing that/ 
 
 ' " How do you know you are a man, and 
 that the name on you is the name you have ? " 
 he said. An' at that I laughed, and said it 
 was more than he could say, for he did not 
 seem to have the way of a man an' he kept 
 his name in his pocket.' 
 
 ' With that he touched me an' I fell into an 
 aisling* And though I saw the red peats 
 before me, I knew I was out on the sea, and 
 was a wave herded by the wind an' lifted an' 
 shaken by the tide an' a great skua flyin' 
 over saw my name floating like a dead fish an' 
 sank to it an' swallowed it an' flew away. 
 An' when I sat up, I was here on this stool 
 before the peats, an' no one beside me. But 
 the door was open, an' though there was no 
 rain the flagstone was wet, an' there was a 
 heavy wetness in the room, an' it was salt. 
 It was like a spilt wave, it was/ 
 
 1 ' Seven swims of a seal.' A seal is supposed to swim a mile 
 on one side without effort, without twist ; and then to change 
 to the other side and swim in the same way the next mile ; and 
 so on. 
 
 2 An aisling: i.e. a swoon with remembrance. 
 
 H 113 
 
Sea- I was silent for a time, listening to the 
 
 Magic. howling of the wind and the stumbling rush 
 of the rain. Then I spoke. 
 
 ' But tell me, Murdo, how you know this 
 was not all a dream ? ' 
 
 ' Because of what I saw when he touched 
 me.' 
 
 ' And what was that ? ' 
 
 ' I have the fear of it still,' he said simply. 
 ' His arms were like water, and I saw the sea- 
 weed floating among the bones in his hand. 
 And so I knew him to be a morar-mhara, 1 a 
 lord of the sea/ 
 
 * And did you see him after that ? ' 
 
 'Yes.' 
 
 ' And did he say anything to you then ? ' 
 
 'Yes. He said to me after he had sat a 
 long time staring in the fire : " Murdo, what 
 age have you ? " An' I told him. I said I 
 would have eighty years come Candlemas. 
 He said, " You Ve got a clean heart : an' 
 you '11 have three times eighty years of youth 
 an' joy before you have your long sleep. 
 An' that is a true word. It will be when 
 the wild geese fly north again." An' then 
 he rose and went away. There was a mist 
 on the sea, an' creepin' up the rocks. I 
 
 1 ' Morar ' (or Morair), a lord, as Morair Gilleasbuig Mine 
 'Illeathain ' (Lord Archibald Maclean). 
 
 114 
 
watched him go into it, an' I heard him Sea- 
 hurling great stones an' dashing them. Magic. 
 " These are the kingdoms of the world" I 
 heard him crying in the mist. No, I have 
 not been seeing him any more at all : 
 not once since that day. An' that 's all, 
 Ban-Morar.' 
 
 That was many months ago. There is no 
 one on the island now : no sheep even, for the 
 pastures are changed. When the wild geese 
 flew north this year, the soul of Murdo 
 Maclan went with them. Or if he did not 
 go with them, he went where Man an pro- 
 mised him he should go. For who can doubt 
 that it was Manan, in the body or vision, he 
 the living prince of the waters, the son of the 
 most ancient god, who, crested as with snow- 
 white canna with a blueness in it, and foot- 
 circt with cold curling flame the uplifted 
 wave and the wandering sea-fire appeared to 
 the old islander ? And if it were he, be sure 
 the promise is now joy and peace to him to 
 whom it was made. 
 
 Murdo must have soothed his last hours 
 of weakness with the cruit - bheul, the little 
 mouth-organ, for it was by the side of his 
 pillow. In these childish things have we 
 our delight, even those few of us who, simple 
 of heart and poor in all things save faith and 
 
Sea- wonder, can, like Murdo Maclan, make a 
 
 Magic. brief happiness out of a little formless music 
 
 with our passing breath, and contentedly put 
 
 it away at last for the deep music of immortal 
 
 things. 
 
 116 
 
FARA-GHAOL 
 
 
 'The sea 's never so full that it can't 
 drown sorrow.' 
 
 Gaelic saying. 
 
 ' " Heart of rock ! " cried the sea to the 
 
 land: 
 
 "Fara-ghaol (false love)!" cried the 
 land to the sea.' 
 Fragment of a Gaelic 'iorram.' 
 
 ' Gur truagh nach mi 's mo leanu a bha 
 A muigh f o sgath nan geug O ! ' 
 
 ' Would that I and my baby were 
 Under the shade of the tree, O ! ' 
 A Uist lullaby. 
 
 AT a running water, that comes out at a 
 place called Strath-na-mara, near the sea-gates 
 of Loch Suibhne, there is a pool called the 
 Pool of the Changeling. None ever goes that 
 way from choice, for it is not only the crying 
 of the curlew that is heard there, or the 
 querulous wailing lapwing. 
 
 It was here that one night, in a September 
 of many storms, a woman stood staring at the 
 sea. The screaming seamews wheeled and 
 sank and circled overhead, and the solanders 
 
 H7 
 
Fara- rose with heavy wing and hoarse cries, and 
 Ghaol. the black scarts screeched to the startled 
 guillemots or to the foam-white terns blown 
 before the wind like froth. The woman looked 
 neither at the seafowl nor at the burning glens 
 of scarlet flame which stretched dishevelled 
 among the ruined lands of the sunset. 
 
 Between the black flurries of the wind, 
 striking the sea like flails, came momentary 
 pauses or long silences. In one of these the 
 woman raised her arms, she the while unheed- 
 ing the cold tide-wash about her feet, where 
 she stood insecurely on the wet slippery 
 tangle. 
 
 Seven years ago this woman had taken the 
 one child she had, that she did not believe to 
 be her own but a changeling, and had put it 
 on the shore at the extreme edge of the tide- 
 reach, and there had left it for the space of 
 an hour. When she came back, the child she 
 had left with a numbness on its face and with 
 the curse of dumbness, was laughing wild, 
 and when she came near, it put out its arms 
 and gave the cry of the young of birds. She 
 lifted the leanav in her arms and stared into 
 its eyes, but there was no longer the weary 
 blankness, and the little one yearned with the 
 petulant laughing and idle whimpering of the 
 children of other mothers. And that mother 
 
 118 
 
there gave a cry of joy, and with a singing Fara- 
 heart went home. Ghaol. 
 
 It was in the seventh year after that finding 
 by the sea, that one day, when a cold wind 
 was blowing from the west, the child Morag 
 came in by the peat-fire, where her mother 
 was boiling the porridge, and looked at her 
 without speaking. The mother turned at that, 
 and looked at Morag. Her heart sank like a 
 pool-lily at shadow, when she saw that Morag 
 had woven a wreath of brown tangled seaweed 
 into her hair. But that was nothing to the 
 bite in her breast when the girl began singing 
 a song that had not a word in it she had ever 
 heard on her own or other lips, but was wild 
 as the sound of the tide calling in dark nights 
 of cloud and wind, or as the sudden coming 
 of waves over a quiet sea in the silence of the 
 black hours of sleep. 
 
 6 What is it, Morag-mo-run ? ' she asked, her 
 voice like a reed in the wind. 
 
 ' It 's time,' says Morag, with a change in her 
 eyes, and her face shining with a gleam on it. 
 
 ' Time for what, Morag ? ' 
 
 ' For me to be going back to the place I 
 came from.' 
 
 ' And where will that be ? ' 
 
 * Where would it be but to the place you 
 took me out of, and called across ? ' 
 
 119 
 
Fara- The mother gave a cry and a sob. ' Sure, 
 
 Ghaol. now, Morag-a-ghraidh, you will be my own 
 lass and no other ? ' 
 
 6 Whist, woman,' answered the girl ; ' don't 
 you hear the laughing in the burn, and the 
 hoarse voice out in the sea ? ' 
 
 'That I do not, O Morag-mo-chree, and 
 sure it 's black sorrow to you and to me to be 
 hearing that hoarse voice and that thin 
 laughing.' 
 
 ' Well, sorrow or no sorrow, I 'm off now, 
 poor woman. And it 's good-bye and a good- 
 bye to you I '11 be saying to you, poor woman. 
 Sure it 's a sorrow to me to leave you in grief, 
 but if you 11 go down to the edge of the water, 
 at the place you took me from, where the 
 runnin' water falls into the sea-pool, you'll 
 be having there against your breast in no time 
 the child of your own that I never was and 
 never could be.' 
 
 ' And why that, and why that, O Morag, 
 lennavan-mo ? ' 
 
 6 Peace on your sorrow, woman, and good- 
 bye to you now ' ; and with that the sea- 
 changeling went laughing out at the door, 
 singing a wave-song so wild and strange the 
 mother's woe was turned to a fear that rose 
 like chill water in her heart. 
 
 When she dared follow and why she did 
 
 120 
 
not go at once she did not know she saw Fara- 
 at first no sight of Morag or any other on the Ghaol. 
 lonely shore. In vain she called, with a great 
 sorrowing cry. But as, later, she stood with 
 her feet in the sea, she was silent of a sudden, 
 and was still as a rock, with her ragged dress 
 about her like draggled seaweed. She had 
 heard a thin crying. It was the voice of a 
 breast- child, and not of a grown lass like 
 Morag. 
 
 When a grey heron toiled sullenly from a 
 hollow among the rocks she went to the place. 
 She was still now, with a frozen sorrow. She 
 knew what she was going to find. But she 
 did not guess till she lifted the little frail 
 child she had left upon the shore seven years 
 back, that the secret people of the sea or those 
 who call across running water could have the 
 hardness and coldness to give her again the 
 unsmiling dumb thing she had mothered with 
 so much bitterness of heart. 
 
 Morag she never saw again, nor did any 
 other see her, except Padruig Macrae, the 
 innocent, who on a New Year's eve, that was 
 a Friday, said that as he was whistling to a 
 seal down by the Pool at Strath-na-mara he 
 heard some one laughing at him ; and when 
 he looked to see who it was he saw it was 
 no other than Morag and he had called to 
 
 121 
 
Fara- her, he said, and she called back to him, 
 Ghaol. Come away, Padruig dear,' and then had 
 swum off like a seal, crying the heavy tears 
 of sorrow. 
 
 And as for the child she had found again 
 on the place she had left her own silent 
 breast-babe seven years back, it never gave 
 a cry or made any sound whatever, but stared 
 with round, strange eyes only, and withered 
 away in three days, and was hidden by her 
 in a sand-hole at the root of a stunted thorn 
 that grew there. 
 
 At every going down of the sun thereafter, 
 the mother of the changeling went to the 
 edge of the sea, and stood among the wet 
 tangle of the wrack, and put out her suppli- 
 cating hands, and never spoke word nor 
 uttered cry. 
 
 But on this night of September, while the 
 gleaming seafowl were flying through the 
 burning glens of scarlet flame in the wide 
 purple wildness of the sky, with the wind 
 falling and wailing and wailing and falling, 
 the woman went over to the running water 
 beyond the sea-pool, and put her skirt over 
 her head and stepped into the pool, and, 
 hooded thus and thus patient, waited till the 
 tide came in. 
 
 122 
 
SORROW ON THE WIND 
 
 'The parable of Pythagoras is dark, 
 but true; Cor ne edito . . . Eat not 
 thy heart.' BACON, Essay, xxvii. 
 
 4 There 's sorrow on the wind, my grief, 
 there 's sorrow on the wind ! ' Song. 
 
 I GIVE here, in narrative form, a story of two, 
 one of whom I knew ; and some will know 
 ' Father Angus,' from whom also I heard it. 
 Rury Macarthur died over a year ago, but not 
 in his own place. He had gone away after 
 Maev left, and settled behind the mainland 
 coast, on an inland-lying farm where the cry 
 of the seamew never came and where even 
 from the last ridges of the upland the grey 
 line of the sea never wavered on the horizon. 
 * It was the wet poor land and the loneliness 
 out yonder that brought him here,' the neigh- 
 bours said. But I, who knew him, think that 
 there was in his mind another reason also. It 
 is for that I credit the singular story of a herd- 
 lad, who said his master could never abide the 
 crying o' peewits, and that he had time upon 
 
 123 
 
Sorrow on time seen him lift an arm and shake it at the 
 the Wind, score or more wheeling lapwings, saying at 
 them swift, hoarse words in Gaelic ; but that 
 once, when a single peewit kept drifting and 
 wailing above him as he walked up Netherton 
 Brae, the tears were coming out of his eyes 
 and down his face, like an old woman crying 
 silently in the gloaming. 
 
 ( Why will you not give up the girl, Rury ?' 
 asked Father Angus M'lan, as he and Rury 
 Macarthur walked along the grey machar, in 
 the fading hours of a chill July day which had 
 been all noise of wind and thin crying lash of 
 rain and the endless wailing of mew and tern, 
 with the desolate and lonely sruch of the tide- 
 lifted or tide-left wrack and the dull wave 
 beating. 
 
 ' Why will you not give up the girl ? She 
 has no heart, they say : and it would only be 
 sorrow you 'd be having, if you took her to 
 your hearthside.' 
 
 Rury Macarthur made no answer, but 
 walked on, his grey eyes staring out across 
 the long thistled greyness of the sandy machar, 
 and upon the dull grey and wan green of the 
 tumbling sea, that sometimes seemed like a 
 
 124 
 
flood coming swift across a narrow down- Sorrow on 
 borne ridge, and sometimes was like an idle the Wind, 
 and formless mist being furtively rolled back 
 and mysteriously gathered by obscure with- 
 drawing hands. 
 
 * I 'm not denying she has the fine looks, 
 Rury : indeed an' it 's true that she has the 
 song and music of beauty. There is no other 
 girl in Barra like Maev, just as I don't know 
 one there or in any of the home-isles that has 
 the old name either. But she doesn't want 
 marriage, you say : nor to leave her grand- 
 mother, who is old and blind : and for this 
 and for that, an' I know not what all.' 
 
 'She doesn't wish the thought of going 
 away from the sea,' said Rury dully. * It 
 isn't the grandmother, no nor yet marriage. 
 I would have old Janet with no thought 
 but gladness: and Maev, if she hasn't the 
 hawk's-hunger for me, hasn't her thought 
 on any other. It 's not that, Father Angus. 
 It 's the sea- water. It 's because I have my 
 croft away up yonder in the hollow of the 
 great strath. There's nought but leaning 
 heads of hills, north, south, east, and west : 
 an' moorland an' bog sloping up against them. 
 You will not have sight of the sea from any 
 place on Tynavhona; no, not if you go up 
 above the summer-shielings, but at one place 
 
 125 
 
Sorrow on only, and that will be at the Cave of the 
 
 the Wind. Wailing Woman on the south-east shoulder 
 
 of Sliav-Gorm. And Maev will not come to 
 
 that loneliness of Tynavhona : no, that she 
 
 will not.' 
 
 ' Loneliness ? Why the girl lives at the 
 very heart of it . . . not a croft near, in the 
 wildness of this machar of the west ! Loneli- 
 ness at Tynavhona ! Why there are five or 
 seven crofts within sight of you, and Donald 
 Maclellan's big farm, and not a mile from 
 your door is the clachan of the Kern, it that 
 would be calling itself a baile but for the fear 
 the crows would fly with the big news to the 
 Morair's factor ! ' 
 
 ' Well and that may be, an' is so, Father 
 Angus. But it's loneliness for Maev. She 
 has the wave of the sea in her heart. Ay, 
 that 's it. She has a wave in her heart. She 
 hears the tides as you hear the church-bell of 
 Our Lady of the Sea. You wouldn't be 
 without the good sound of the bells, Father 
 Angus : and if you were in a place where 
 there would not be the holy bells, no, not 
 once, you would be listening to them in your 
 sleep, and at this hour and at that, you never 
 knowing when or how, but something in 
 you suddenly saying Whisht. An' if any day 
 you heard them in the glen, or on the moor, 
 
 126 
 
or on the slope of the hill, or by the byres Sorrow on 
 maybe, ay, or in your room with book and the Wind, 
 oil-lamp beside you, would you not start an' 
 be on your feet with the beating heart in you, 
 and your eyes like a stoat's in the dark, smell- 
 ing the wind ? Ay, you would have the 
 restlessness, you would, and the fever : and 
 then, or if not then, soon, ay, soon or late, you 
 would rise and go away. You would follow 
 the call of the bell. Ay, Father Angus, an' 
 that is a true word. And what that call of 
 the bell would be to you, the sound of the 
 water an' the whisperin' of the waste and all 
 that 's in the sea for good and evil (peace to it, 
 the good sea ; I "d say no evil of it, or of any 
 whose place it is) ay, all that and more, is the 
 sea-call to Maev.' 
 
 ' It 's all a dream, Rury. The girl 's a bit 
 fey with youth an' loneliness.' 
 
 ' Dream or no dream, Father Angus, it 's a 
 daylong sorrow for me. I asked her to come 
 up to Tynavhona an' I would give her all I 
 could an' be asking no more than she cared to 
 give. There's no need for her to work at 
 what she has not the liking for. There's 
 Morag an' Sheen an' Mary to do all that's 
 needed. " You Ve a peewit's heart," I said to 
 her, " and I don't want to be lyin' beside you 
 at night, listening to the wind and fearing 
 
 127 
 
Sorrow on that if I sleep you '11 be up and away on wild 
 the Wind, wings." She laughed at that. "It's not a 
 peewit's heart I have," she said, "but the 
 heart of a tern. You might blow a breath 
 and I 'd drift to your feet like flyin' bog- 
 cotton, with a sigh an' a cry : an' if it 's 
 another wind or breath that blows, then I 
 drift away like bog-cotton too, an' with a sigh 
 an' a cry, an' it's to the shore I go, to the 
 shore in the dark, where there 's nothing but 
 blackness and noise of water an' whiteness of 
 foam. An' there you cannot come, Rury, 
 no, not for all your lovingness. No, no, the 
 peewit to the moor, and the tern to the salt- 
 ness and wildness of the water. Give me a 
 peewit's heart, an' I'll come to Sliav-Gorm, 
 1 11 come to your hidden moors ! " An' I 
 pleaded an' argued, Father Angus, but no 
 word more than that could I get. ..." Give 
 me a peewit's heart, an' then I '11 come to 
 your hidden moors." 
 
 ' Well, and have you not asked again ? 
 The girl's thought may have changed. You 
 know the way the herring have : for a score 
 years, it may be, they will come from the 
 wildness of the sea round one headland, and 
 in the same week of the same month : and 
 then all of a sudden, when the boats are 
 dappling the haven, they sink fathoms deep, 
 
 128 
 
and take a veer like a scythe going through Sorrow on 
 green grass, and are gone like a shadow, and the Wind, 
 will not be seen again for weeks maybe, for 
 months perhaps, perhaps not for years on 
 years. It's their way. And there's women 
 as incalculable as that.' 
 
 'Yes, Father Angus, an' for sure I have, 
 an' again an' again too. And it was only 
 three days ago that I went to her, for the 
 last time. I said it was for the last time, and 
 she said that was well, for she could never 
 have any word more to put upon that thing 
 between us. Old Janet is passing swift, she 
 said, and when that is come which cannot be 
 long coming, then she will go away. She has 
 the thought of the lonely islet in her mind, 
 I know : the little bit of rock and grass out 
 yonder that's called Eilean Caorach. She 
 said once she would be glad to be there alone 
 for a time. And then, when she goes away 
 to the great towns, the mainland towns or the 
 English towns or in the Americas for go she 
 will, and be lost and broken like a wounded 
 seamew, and sink and be sucked down like 
 that seamew, oh yes, I know that well, as a 
 man hears death whispering a long time be- 
 fore the cry and the silence when Maev will 
 go away to these towns, and with the man 
 she loves then, or dreams she loves, or with 
 
 I 129 
 
Sorrow on one who will master her and have her secret 
 
 the Wind, anger, then all that's in and around Eilean 
 
 Caorach, and all about Ardnatoon where she 
 
 now is, will be in her heart, like moonlight in 
 
 a pool of water. For her heart 's of water.' 
 
 'What were her words, Rury?' asked 
 Father Angus quietly. 
 
 ' They would be like this,' Rury answered, 
 after a pause. 'They would be like this: 
 " Put your trouble away, Ruaridh a gradach. 
 Give it to the peewits up at Tynavhona, but 
 don't be hearing them calling my name for 
 ever and ever. I loved you, I thought, but I 
 have not that thought on me, now. But it 
 would not matter no, it would not matter. 
 You told me I had a wave of the sea in my 
 heart. I 'm not knowing that, nor why, nor 
 the meaning to it. But it may be. I can't 
 love you, for you have a heart like a moun- 
 tain. It would always be there: I could 
 never get out of sight of it. There would be 
 no going this way and that way. It is a good 
 mountain but, oh yes, I have the wave in 
 my heart. I cannot be staying ever in one 
 place, Rury. No, that I cannot. I could not 
 be living month -in month -out at Tyna- 
 vhona. Where would I be for the sea ? 
 There is no water up there. But you would 
 have gladness to be living here, anywhere 
 
 130 
 
yes, yes, I know that, caraid dileas, but Sorrow on 
 
 there 's no change in you. There 's no wave the Wind. 
 
 of the sea in your heart. You have not the 
 
 understanding of all this, Rury ? No, nor is 
 
 it with me any better. But I cannot be living 
 
 here any more. In the time of the sorrow 
 
 that 's coming it 's to Port-na-long I '11 go, to 
 
 sail away, and I shall not be back again : no, 
 
 never here. It is no sorrow I am wishing 
 
 you: peace be with you. Forget." And 
 
 that was all.' 
 
 'Well, Rury, I have the true sorrow for 
 you. It 's a hard thing to be in the fowler's 
 snare, as the saying is. What old tale is 
 there that is not full of the sighing an' sorrow 
 of vain love and wild beauty that 's like a 
 flame leaping in the wind an' falling away to 
 ashes and black grief ? ' 
 
 ' Ay, it is a hard thing, Father Angus.' 
 
 The two walked on awhile, in silence. The 
 grey hour grew dusky with thick shadow, 
 though there was no night there in Barra, at 
 that season : only, in times of gloom and 
 storm, a coming of dull shadow into the half- 
 night and half- day. 
 
 A guillemot flew with rapid whirling scream 
 overhead. The harsh cries of scarts came 
 from the weed-covered rocks at the sea's edge. 
 Terns drifted past like flying foam, with a 
 
Sorrow on wail that fluttered behind their flight as a 
 the Wind, blown feather idly whirled in the wake of the 
 wind. From the peat bog beyond the machar, 
 they could hear cries and sounds that might 
 be the drumming of snipe or the harsh screech 
 of the solander or the melancholy flute of the 
 binne-bheul, but were not quite as these are, 
 coming as they did out of a gloom full of 
 menace and the obscure furtive ways of 
 untrodden morass. 
 
 Father Angus sighed as he thought of the 
 smallness of the little island- world that was 
 all in all to him and his. How vast and grey 
 and illimitable seemed the long machar, how 
 vaster and sadder and more illimitable the sea 
 beyond, how vast and shadowy the inland 
 hills. The lifting of a Hand, nay but the 
 least breath of the Unknowable, and these 
 hills would be as blown dust, and the machar 
 as a handful of ground sand, and the great 
 sea no more than a cup of water spilt and 
 thrown upon the wind. How futile all human 
 longing, all passion of the heart, all travail of 
 the spirit, beside this terrible reality of wind 
 and vastness, of wind baying like a hound in 
 a wilderness a wilderness where the hound's 
 voice would fall away at last, and the hound's 
 shadow fade, and infinitude and eternity be 
 beyond and above and behind and beneath. 
 
 132 
 
But in Rury's heart there was only a dumb Sorrow on 
 revolt against the blind forces. He did not the Wind, 
 know them, nor what they did, and even in 
 his secret mind he did not put his hatred upon 
 them. That would be to bring swift evil 
 upon him. They hear, the everlasting ones. 
 They hear a whisper in the dark : the wise 
 will keep even thought of them screened from 
 the proud, unrelenting eyes. But in his heart 
 he hated them. It was they who put a wave 
 of the sea between him and all his hopes. If 
 Maev were a woman as other women perhaps, 
 even, he thought, if he could love as other 
 
 men But no, it was their will that some 
 
 should be children of water, and no love and 
 no hope and no supplications would avail, 
 no, not till the whole world was drowned in 
 the sea, or till the sea was gathered to the 
 leaning lips of the sky, as the sun sucks the 
 midsummer dew. 
 
 The night- wind rose out of the west. In 
 the vastness of shadowy gloom over sea and 
 land it moved like a lamenting voice, a crea- 
 ture blind and without form, homeless, seeking 
 what is not to be found; crying sometimes, as a 
 lance slanting on the wind, an ancient sorrow ; 
 deepening sometimes in an immense, gather- 
 ing, multitudinous sound, as though the tides 
 of night broke against the shores of the stars. 
 
 133 
 
 
THE LYNN OF DREAMS 
 
 4 Men shall die who have an ear for 
 harmonies . . .' Boinn of the Sidhe 
 (in The Black Linn of Fraech). 
 
 ' Ah, son of water, daughter of fire, 
 how can ye twain be one ? ' The Little 
 Book of the Great Enchantment. 
 
 'And lest that evil Destiny which 
 puts dust upon dreams, and silence 
 upon sweet airs, and still songs, and 
 makes the hand idle, and the mind an 
 ebbing leaf, and the spirit as foam 
 upon the sea, should take from this 
 dreamer what he had won, the god of 
 enchantment and illusion gave the man 
 a broken heart, and a mind filled with 
 the sighing of weariness.' The Ancient 
 Beauty. 
 
 THERE was a man let us call him John o' 
 Dreams who loved words as the many love 
 the common things of desire, and as the few 
 love the beautiful things of the arts. He was 
 known in that world, at once so narrow and 
 so wide, where the love of perfected utterance 
 in prose or verse is become an ideal. What 
 he wrote was read with eagerness : for those 
 who turned to his books knew they would find 
 there not only his own thought, which was 
 
 134 
 
deep, and his own imagination, which had a The Lynn 
 far- wandering wing, but a verbal music that of Dreams * 
 was his own ; a subtle use of the underplay of 
 word-life, the colour, meaning, romance, asso- 
 ciation, suggestiveness, shadowy hints of 
 words ; the incommunicable charm. 
 
 He loved his art, and he had much to say, 
 and above all longed to capture into rhythm 
 and cadence the floating music that haunted 
 him, and the wonder of life that was his con- 
 tinual dream. But he had a fatal curiosity. 
 Year by year this had grown upon him. He 
 desired to know the well-springs : he desired 
 the well-spring of all literature. At first he 
 sought closely into the art of the rarest 
 masters, now in verse, now in prose : the 
 masters of the dim past, working in the pale 
 gold of antique Greek or the ivory of Catullus, 
 or playing on silver flutes like the obscure 
 singers of the Anthology ; or the masters of a 
 later time moulding molten brass like Dante 
 and Milton, or achieving a supreme alchemy 
 like Shakespeare, or shaping agate and por- 
 phyry like Leopardi, or white cornelian like 
 Landor, or chrysoprase and green jade like 
 Leconte de Lisle and Walter Pater. But 
 nowhere in these did he find the final secret 
 he sought. No, nor in any other ; nor in any 
 language inhabited by beauty neither in the 
 
 135 
 
The Lynn limpid excellence of French, since Villon 
 of Dreams. q u i c k ene( j ft w fth a mo cking sweetness till 
 Verlaine thrilled it with a sound like a lost air 
 in still woods, so subtle, so evanishing, so little 
 of the world about us, so much of the other 
 world on whose leaning brows are mystery and 
 shadow : nor in the sweet and stately passage 
 of the tongue of Florentine and Roman : nor 
 in the deep, troubled tongues of the north, 
 from Weimar to Christiania : nor in the 
 speech, accompanied by clarions and chants, 
 of the spellbound lands of Spain : nor in the 
 great language, like ' a mighty army marching 
 with banners,' of the English nations. 
 
 Then he turned to his own shaped and 
 coloured utterance, and looked into that ; and 
 into his own mind so far as he could see on 
 this side its pinnacles and sudden gulfs ; and 
 into his own soul so far as he could sink into 
 these depths. But neither in those still depths, 
 nor in that wide cold region of shade and 
 shine, nor even in that shaped thought and 
 coloured utterance out of which came the 
 beautiful phantoms of his imagination, could 
 he find the silver cord, the thin invisible line 
 that only the soul knows, when it leaves its 
 mortality, as fragrance leaves a rose at dusk. 
 
 Then a great sadness fell on him, and he 
 wrote no more. 
 
 136 
 
For long he had been in touch with that The Lynn 
 other world of which he had so often written : of Dreams, 
 and now he dwelled more and more in that 
 company of the imagination and of remem- 
 brance. 
 
 Dark, pathless glens await the troubled 
 thought of those who cross the dim border- 
 lands. To dwell overlong, there ; to listen 
 overlong, there ; overlong to speak with those, 
 or to see those whose bright, cold laughter is 
 to us so sad (we know not why), and whose 
 tranquil songs are to us so passing forlorn and 
 wild ; overlong to commune with them by the 
 open gate, at the wild wood or near the green 
 mound or by the grey wave; is to sow the 
 moonseed of a fatal melancholy, wherein, when 
 it is grown and its poppy-heads stir in a drowsy 
 wind, the mind that wanders there calls upon 
 oblivion as a lost child calling upon God. 
 
 But, in that intercourse, that happens some- 
 times which cannot otherwise happen. 
 
 And so it was that one day while he of 
 whom I write lay dreaming by a pool, set by 
 a river that ran through a wood of wind and 
 shadow, a stranger appeared by his side. He 
 knew from whom this woodfarer came, for 
 his eyes were cold and glad and no shadow 
 fell on the bracken. Perhaps he knew it 
 may well be, he knew more than this : for 
 
 137 
 
The Lynn the cry of the plover was overheard, and the 
 of Dreams, deceitful drumming of snipe was near, and 
 these are two witnesses of him, Dalua, the 
 Master of Illusions, the Fool of Faery the 
 dark brother of Angus 6g and of Airill Ail 
 na'n <?)g, beautiful lords of life and youth. 
 
 So when the stranger spoke, and said he 
 would lead to the Lynn of Dreams, and reveal 
 to him there the souls of words in their 
 immortal shape and colour, and how the flow 
 of a secret tide continually moves them 
 into fugitive semblances of mortal colour and 
 mortal shape, the man dreaming by the water- 
 side gladly rose, and the two went together, 
 under the shadow of old trees, to the Lynn 
 of Dreams. 
 
 When come to that place, where timeless 
 rocks shelved to a deep water, green as a leaf, 
 the mortal and the immortal stooped. 
 
 And there the dreamer of whom I write 
 saw his heart's desire bending like a hind of 
 the hill and quenching her thirst. For there 
 he saw the images of beautiful words, as he 
 knew them in their mortal shape and colour, 
 clothe themselves in drifting thought, and 
 often become the thought whose raiment they 
 seemed or stand, like reeds in shadow, and 
 let the drifting thought take them and wear 
 them as crowns, or diadems, or crested plumes. 
 
 138 
 
And looking deeper he saw the souls of The Lynn 
 words, in their immortal shape and colour, of Dreams. 
 These would not come from the violet hollows 
 where they moved in their undying dance of 
 joy, nor could the supplication of yearning 
 thoughts reach them. 
 
 He saw, too, the flow of the secret tide that 
 continually moved these children of joy into 
 semblance of mortal beauty, images known 
 in happy hours or seen in dreams, but often 
 such as he had never known either in waking 
 dream or in sleeping trance. These he saw 
 ceaselessly woven and unwoven and rewoven. 
 The clusters of many Pleiades made a maze 
 in that living darkness. His soul cried aloud 
 for joy. 
 
 When, startled by the wail of a plover at 
 his ear, he looked round, he saw that he was 
 by the riverside again. The stranger stood 
 beside him. 
 
 ' What have I seen ? ' he stammered. 
 
 ' I gave you a cup to drink, and you drank. 
 It is the Cup of which Tristran drank when 
 he loved Yseult beyond the ache of mortal 
 love : the Cup of Wisdom, that gives mad- 
 ness and death before it gives knowledge and 
 life.' 
 
 The man was alone then, for the Master of 
 Illusions had gone : Herdsman of thoughts 
 
 139 
 
The Lynn and dreams that wander upon the Hills of 
 of Dreams. Time. 
 
 But on the morrow, that led many unchang- 
 ing morrows, the dreamer of whom I have 
 spoken knew that the learning of the secret 
 he had won was in truth the knowledge that 
 is immortal knowledge, and therefore cannot 
 be uttered by mortal tongue or shaped by 
 mortal thought or coloured by mortal art. 
 
 He paid the eric for that wisdom. It is 
 the law. 
 
 When again he strove to put beauty into 
 the shimmering, elusive veil of words, he knew 
 with bitter pain that he had lost even the 
 artistry that had once been his. After too 
 deep wisdom he stumbled in the shallows of 
 his own poor troubled knowledge. 
 
 For a time he struggled, as a swimmer 
 borne from the shore. 
 
 It was all gone : the master-touch, the 
 secret art, the craft. He became an obscure 
 stammerer. At the last he was dumb. And 
 then his heart broke, and he died. 
 
 But had not the Master of Illusions shown 
 him his heart's desire, and made it his ? 
 
 140 
 
MAYA 
 
 'Those whispers just as you 
 have fallen asleep what are 
 they and whence ? ' COLERIDGE, 
 Anima Poetae. 
 
 LESS has been written of the psychology of 
 waking dreams than of the psychology of 
 the dreams of sleep. Surely they are more 
 wonderful, and less lawless, if that can be 
 without law which is invariable in disorder. 
 I do not mean the dreams which one controls, 
 as the wind herds the clouds which rise from 
 the sea-horizons : but the dreams which come 
 unawares, as, when one is lying on the grass 
 and idly thinking, there may appear in the 
 passing of a moment the shadow of a hawk 
 hovering unseen. They are not less irrespon- 
 sible and unaccountable : they come, reinless 
 and wild, across unknown plains, and one 
 hardly hears the trampling of their feet or sees 
 the flashing of tameless eyes before the 
 imagination is carried away by them. In a 
 twinkling, the world that was is no more, 
 and the world that now is has neither frontiers 
 
 141 
 
Maya. nor height nor depth, and the dancing stars 
 may be underfoot, and from the zenith to the 
 horizons may lean the greenness of the domed 
 sea, and clouds be steadfast as the ancient 
 hills, and dreams and passions and emotions 
 be the winged creatures who move through 
 gulfs of light and shadow. 
 
 Sometimes it happens that, in sleep, dreams 
 have a rhythmical order, a beauty as of sculp- 
 ture. It is rare : for when the phantoms of 
 the silent house are not wild or fantastic or 
 futile, they move commonly as to a music 
 unheard of us, and are radiant or sombre as 
 though an unseen painter touched them with 
 miraculous dyes. But, once perhaps, the 
 dreamer may rejoice in a subtle and beautiful 
 spiritual architecture : and look upon some 
 completed vision of whose advent he has had 
 no premonition, of whose mysterious processes 
 he has no gleam, and whose going will be as 
 lordly as its coming, without touch of ruin or 
 of faded beauty. 
 
 Who builds these perfected dreams ? What 
 wings, in the impenetrable shadow wherein 
 one has sunk, have lifted them to the verge 
 where the unsleeping soul can perceive, and, 
 perceiving, perhaps understand ? 
 
 These are not the distempered images of 
 broken remembrance : they are not the foam 
 
 142 
 
idly fretting the profound suspense of the deep. Maya. 
 Nor is the mind consciously at work, building, 
 or shaping, or controlling. As the shadow 
 comes, they come : but as the shadow of some 
 shape of beauty thrown in moonlight in some 
 enchanted garden, a garden wherein one has 
 never been, a shape upon which none has ever 
 looked, a thing of life, complete and wonderful. 
 Strange imaginations arise, as birds winged 
 with flame and with heads like flowers : the 
 unknown is become familiar. When not an 
 image is made by that subtle artificer within ; 
 when not a thought steals out to whisper or 
 to shape ; when the mind is as a hushed child 
 in the cradle, hearing a new and deep music 
 and unknowing the sea, listening to a lullaby 
 beyond the mother-song and unknowing the 
 wind . . . who, then, fashions those palaces 
 upon the sea, those walls of green ice among 
 the rose-garths of June, those phantoms of 
 bright flame sleeping in peace among dry grass 
 or moving under ancient trees of the unfailing 
 branch and the unfading leaf ? 
 
 Surely in these is a mystery beyond that of 
 the unquiet brain in a body ill at ease, or 
 beyond that of the mind when like a sleuth- 
 hound it slips out on the trail of old dreams 
 and fleeing imaginations ? 
 
 When first I began to notice these lamps 
 
Maya. of beauty hung in unexpected paths, whether 
 in the twilights of bodily sleep or when the 
 mind was in that trance of the spirit akin to 
 the slumber of the body, I strove to under- 
 stand, to trace, to go up to the hidden altars 
 and look on the forbidden ecstasy. But, soon, 
 an inward wisdom withheld me. And so for 
 years I have known what has been my whim 
 to call by a name: The Secret Garden, the 
 Wliite Company, and Music. 
 
 Of what I have seen there, and what music 
 heard, and by whom I have been met and 
 with whom gone, it is not my purpose to 
 speak. Dreamland is the last fantasy of the 
 unloosened imagination, or its valley of Avalon, 
 or the via sacra for the spirit, accordingly as 
 one finds it, or with what dower one goes to 
 it. The ways are hidden to all save to those 
 who themselves find. * Thou canst not travel 
 on the Path till thou hast become the Path itself.' 
 If these unaccountable waking and unsought 
 dreams bore any immediate or later relation to 
 the things held by the mind, or recently held, 
 or foreseen, one would the more readily believe 
 that the inner mind was working slowly and 
 s in its own way at what the outer intelligence 
 had not reached or had ignored. But some- 
 times they have no recognisable bearing. 
 Sometimes, indeed, they are as fragmentary as 
 
 144 
 
the phantasmagoria of sleep. A friend told Maya, 
 me this : * Speaking to a friend on ordinary 
 matters, suddenly I saw him quite clearly 
 walking swiftly along a shore-road unknown 
 to me, a road northern in feature and yet in 
 detail as unfamiliar to me as though set in an 
 unvisited land. He was wild and unkempt, 
 but walked with uplifted head and swiftly. 
 His head and right shoulder were meshed in a 
 net, which trailed behind him. His left arm 
 gleamed as though it were of silver, or mailed 
 like a salmon. His left hand was a flame of 
 fire that was as though entranced, for it neither 
 hurt the unconscious walker nor burned any- 
 thing with which it came in contact. The 
 vision came and went more swiftly than I have 
 taken time to tell of it, and had no bearing, so 
 far as I know, then or later, on anything con- 
 cerning either him or myself. A few days 
 later, certainly, he told me that he had been 
 thinking some time before of the symbolism 
 of Nuada of the Dedannan, Nuada of the 
 Silver Hand, a Gaelic divinity of uncertain 
 attributes, but whom some take to be a Celtic 
 Hephaistos. Whether this is any clue I can- 
 not say : or why, since it came, it could not 
 come with more obvious bearing, in a less 
 obscure symbolism. And why, too, should 
 the large round stones on the shore, the 
 

 Maya. peculiar wind-waved line of old yews, the 
 stranded fishing-coble, and other details be so 
 extraordinarily vivid so vivid that though I 
 know I have never seen this headland I could 
 not possibly mistake it were I some day to 
 come upon its like.' 
 
 Dreams or visions such as this, are, I fancy, 
 of a kind that have not necessarily any signifi- 
 cance. There are curlews of the imagination 
 that suddenly go crying through waste places 
 in the mind. 
 
 Of another, I think differently. 'In the 
 middle of a commonplace action of daily life 
 suddenly I saw a woodland glade in twilight. 
 A man lay before a fire, but when I looked 
 closer I saw that what I thought was fire was 
 a mass of continually revolving leaves, though 
 no leaf was blown from the maze, which was 
 like an ever whirling yet never advancing 
 wheel in that forest silence. He took up a 
 reed-pipe or something of the kind. He 
 played, and I saw the stars hang on the 
 branches of the trees. He played, and I saw 
 the great boles of the oaks become like amber 
 filled with moonlight. He played, and then 
 suddenly I realised that it was a still music, 
 and had its life for me only in the symbol of 
 colour. Flowers and plants and tree-growths 
 of shape and hue such as I had never seen, 
 
 146 
 
and have never imagined, arose in the glade, Maya, 
 which was now luminous as a vast shell behind 
 which burned torches of honey - coloured 
 flame. 
 
 'These changed continually, as the red 
 foliage of fire continually renews itself. Then 
 the player rose, and was a changing flame, and 
 was gone. Another player was in the glade, 
 where all was moveless shadows and old dark- 
 ness. " It is I, now, who am God," he said. 
 Then he in turn was like a shadow of a reed in 
 the wind, that a moment is, and is not. And 
 I looked, and in the heart of the darkness saw 
 a white light continually revolving : and in the 
 silence was a voice ..." And I I am Life.'" 
 
 Here, obviously, clear or not, there is the 
 symbolic imagination at work. I do not think 
 an interpreter of dreams need seek here for 
 other than spiritual significance. It is, surely, 
 an effort of the soul to create in symbolic 
 vision a concept of spiritual insight such as the 
 mind cannot adequately realise within its re- 
 stricted terms, or what is beyond the reach of 
 words. For these, though children of air and 
 fire, have mortal evasive wings, and hands of 
 impalpable dew, and feet wandering and 
 uncertain as the eddying leaf. 
 
 It is less easy to interpret or accept either 
 the rounded and complete dream of sleep 
 
 147 
 
 
Maya. that all too rare visitor in the night of the 
 body or the waking dream that comes not 
 less mysteriously, unsought, clanless among 
 the tribes of the day's thoughts, an exile from 
 a forbidden land, a prince who will not be 
 commanded in his going or coming, who 
 knows not any law of ours but only his own 
 law. 
 
 It is to write of one such vision that I took 
 up my pen and have written these things. It 
 was a dream in sleep, but so potent an image, 
 that, with both body and mind alert in startled 
 wakefulness, I saw it not less clearly, not less 
 vividly, not less overwhelmingly near and 
 present. Its strangeness was in its living near- 
 ness in vision, and perhaps neither in aspect 
 nor relation may appeal to others. Perhaps, 
 even, it will seem no more than a luminous 
 phantasy, void of significance. But, to me, it 
 appeared, later, as an effort on the part of the 
 spirit to complete in symbol what I had failed 
 to do in words, while I have been writing these 
 foregoing pages on the children of water 
 of those in whose hearts is the unresting wave, 
 and whom the tides of happy life lift and leave, 
 and whose longing is idle as foam, and whose 
 dreams are as measureless as all the waters of 
 the world. 
 
 I saw, suddenly, greenness come out of the 
 148 
 
sea, and then the sea pass like a dewdrop in Maya, 
 the heat of the sun. A vast figure stood on 
 the bare understrand of ocean, and leaned on 
 his right arm along a mountain-brow so high 
 that it seemed to me Himalaya or the extreme 
 Cordillera. As he leaned, I could not see the 
 face, for the titan stared beyond the rim of the 
 world. But he leaned negligently, as though 
 idly watching, idly waiting. There was nothing 
 of him but was green water, fluent as the home- 
 less wave yet held in unwavering columnar 
 suspense. Not a limb but was moulded in 
 strength and beauty, not a muscle of man's 
 mortal body but was there: yet the white 
 coral of the depths gleamed through the titanic 
 feet sculptured as in green jade, and the float- 
 ing brown weed of the perpetual tide cast a 
 wavering shadow among the sculptured green 
 ridges and valleys of that titanic head. But 
 it was not an image I saw : it was not an 
 image of life, but life. There was not an 
 ocean withheld in that bended arm, in that 
 lifted shoulder, which could not have yielded 
 in flying wave and soaring billow, or heaved 
 with a slow mighty breath sustaining navies 
 and argosies as drifting shells. When thought 
 stirred behind the unseen brows, tides moved 
 within these columnar deeps: and I do not 
 doubt that the vast heart was a maelstrom 
 
 149 
 
Maya. where the inrush and outrush of tempestuous 
 surges made a throb that shook the coasts of 
 worlds beyond our own. 
 
 Looking on the greatness of this upbuilded 
 sea, this titanic statue of silence and water, I 
 thought I beheld the most ancient of the gods: 
 the most ancient of the gods, the greatest of 
 the gods. 
 
 Suddenly I heard breaths of music, and a 
 sound as of a multitude of swift feet around 
 me and beyond. I turned. There was no 
 one. But a low voice, that ran through me 
 like fire, spoke. 
 
 6 Look, child of water, at your god.' 
 
 Again I heard breaths of music rise, like 
 thin spirals of smoke, but I did not see whence 
 they came. 
 
 While the music breathed, I saw the Titan 
 stand back from the rim of the world. His 
 face slowly turned. But a whiteness as of 
 foam was against my eyes, and a sudden in- 
 tolerable fear bowed my head. When I 
 looked again I saw only an illimitable sea that 
 reached from my feet, green as grass : and on 
 the west of the world the unloosened rains and 
 dews hung like a veil. 
 
 The unseen one beside me stooped, and 
 lifted a wave, and threw it into my heart. 
 
 Then I knew that I was made of the kin- 
 150 
 
ship of Manan, and should never know peace, Maya, 
 but should have the homeless wave for my 
 heart's brother, and the salt sea as my cup 
 to drink, and the wilderness of waters as the 
 symbol of all vain ungovernable longings and 
 desires. 
 
 And I woke, still looking out of time into 
 eternity, and saw a titan figure of living green 
 water sculptured like jade, with feet set in the 
 bed of ancient oceans ; leaning, with averted 
 face, on a mountain-brow, vast as Andes, vast 
 as Himalaya. 
 
For the Beauty of an Idea 
 
 i 
 PRELUDE 
 
( The first necessity for peoples, as 
 for man, is to die. ' CHATEAUBRIAND, 
 Memoires, pt. xi. bk. iv. 
 
 6 In the life of cities nothing preserves 
 like early overthrow, nothing destroys 
 like continuous life.' FREEMAN, Essay 
 
 f When a man has attained those 
 things which are necessary to life, there 
 is another alternative than to attain the 
 superfluities; he may adventure on life 
 now. ' THOREAU . 
 

 FOR THE BEAUTY OF AN IDEA 
 
 i 
 PRELUDE 
 
 THE short essay, entitled ' Celtic,' which 
 forms the second of the three parts of this 
 study in the spiritual history of the Gael, 
 appeared first in The Contemporary Review, 
 and a few months later in the volume en- 
 titled The Divine Adventure: lona: and other 
 Studies in Spiritual History, and was a signal 
 for divided comment. But for the moment I 
 would recur only to the aspect it wore for 
 many in that country for whose more eager 
 spirits it was above all intended Ireland being 
 to-day not only the true home of lost causes 
 and a nursery of the heroic powers and influ- 
 ences that go out to conquer and die, but of 
 the passionate and evil powers and influences 
 which seek to conquer and are slow to die. 
 
 Although in Ireland, then, this essay to- 
 wards a worthy peace, where peace may be, 
 and towards a compromise, in nothing ignoble, 
 for the sake of union in a noble destiny, was 
 
 5S 
 
For the welcomed by many there were others, and 
 
 Beauty of among them one or two of those deservedly 
 
 an Idea, ^eld * n h onourj who execrated the attempt. 1 
 
 I have no ill-will to those who, no doubt 
 
 in part through a hurried habit of mind, 
 
 sought by somewhat intemperate means to 
 
 discredit the plea. I believe I would say I 
 
 1 As it has been 'authoritatively* stated that no Irish journal 
 has endorsed these views, one out of six or seven of the leading 
 Irish journals representative of all degrees of opinion, which 
 have more or less ' endorsed ' the views here set forth, may be 
 selected. In the reprinting of so personal a note the author 
 trusts to be absolved of any other intent than to refute in what 
 seems the simplest and most direct way a statement calculated 
 to mislead : 
 
 * It seems an unexpected utterance from Miss Macleod. Yet, in point 
 of fact, it only shows the awakening of the same philosophic spirit which 
 we have observed in other parts of this book and in other regions of her 
 thought. Miss Macleod has noticed the narrow separatism of sentiment 
 which has sometimes marked the Celtic literary revival, and sees that it 
 can only keep the Celtic spirit in a hopeless and sterile conflict with fact 
 and truth. ... In her own words : 
 
 "The Celtic element in our national life has a vital and great part to 
 play. We have a most noble ideal if we will but accept it. And that is, 
 not to perpetuate feuds, not to try to win back what has gone away upon 
 the wind, not to repay ignorance with scorn, or dulness with contempt, 
 or past wrongs with present hatred, but so to live, so to pray, so to hope, 
 so to work, so to achieve, that we, what is left of the Celtic races, of the 
 Celtic genius, may permeate the greater race of which we are a vital part, 
 so that with this Celtic emotion, Celtic love of beauty, and Celtic spiritu- 
 ality a nation greater than any the world has seen may issue, a nation 
 refined and strengthened by the wise relinquishings and steadfast ideals 
 of Celt and Saxon, united in a common fatherland, and in singleness of 
 pride and faith." 
 
 * # * * * * 
 
 These are great, wise, and courageous words. . . . When the Irish Celt 
 begins to heed them he will cease to be the type of self -torturing futility 
 which, with all his gifts, he so largely is at the present day.' (From an 
 article, 'A Celtic Thinker,' in the Dublin Express.) 
 
 156 
 
know, so sure am I these had at heart the Prelude 
 thought of Ireland, that passion which is 
 indeed the foremost lamp of the Gael, the 
 passion of nationality; and having this thought 
 and this passion, considered little or for the 
 time ignored the ' sweet reasonableness,' the 
 courtesy cherished by minds less sick with 
 hope deferred, less desperate with defeated 
 dreams. But in controversy nothing else 
 was revealed than that enthusiasm can some- 
 times lead to confused thought and hasty 
 speech, and (it may well be) that the writer of 
 6 Celtic ' had failed to be lucid or adequate 
 on that fundamental factor in Gaelic union, 
 that essential element in the continued life 
 and development of the Gael the proud pre- 
 servation of nationality. I can imagine no 
 worse thing for Ireland than that, in exchange 
 for a dull peace and a poor prosperity, it 
 should sink to the vassalage of a large Eng- 
 lish shire. In the wise words of Thoreau, 
 the cost of a thing is the amount of what may 
 be called life which is required to be exchanged 
 for it, immediately or in the long-run. 
 
 The aim of this essay was to help towards a 
 workable reconciliation: not between 'invet- 
 erate and irreconcilable foes ' (which is but 
 the rhetoric of those fevered with an epileptic 
 nationalism), but a reconciliation such as may 
 
 157 
 
For the be persuaded between two persons, each with ] 
 Beauty of divergent individual aims and ideals, yet able i 
 an Idea. to un j te ^.^ d ecencv an( j courtesy in a league 
 for the common good, the commonweal. It 
 seemed, and seems, to the writer that common- 
 sense (there is no Celtic word for it) makes 
 clear that an absolute irreconcilability is 
 simply a cul-de-sac, down which baffled 
 dreams and hopes and faiths come at last 
 upon a blank wall. Strength is built out 
 of forfeiture as well as of steadfastness, and 
 the man or woman, cause or race wins, which 
 on occasion can relinquish or forbear. Merely 
 to be irreconcilable is to prefer the blank 
 wall to the open road. 
 
 But when that is said, it does not follow 
 that there are no subjects, no ideals, no aims 
 which stand apart from this debatable ground 
 of reconciliation. On the contrary, I believed, 
 and believe, that there are subjects, ideals, and 
 aims whose continuity lies only in an unswerv- 
 ing steadfastness. Nay, further, with the 
 author of The Hearts of Men, I would say 
 with all my faith, 'the people that cannot 
 fight shall die.' On any such people the 
 shadow of the end is already come. All signs 
 and portents will have borne testimony. Be- 
 fore a nation dies, the soul of that nation is 
 dead ; and before the death of the soul of the 
 
 158 
 
nation its gods perish : God perishes. For Prelude. 
 God, who is eternal in the Spirit, is, in the 
 image and in the symbol, as in 'omnipotence' 
 as we conceive it, mortal. Unto every nation 
 of man God dies when in the soul of the 
 nation the altars are cold. There are the 
 j altars of divine faith, and the altars of spiritual 
 ideals, and the altars of the commonweal. 
 Beware the waning of these fires. 
 
 The keynote of ' Celtic ' is in the sentence, 
 'We have of late heard so much of Celtic 
 beauty and Celtic emotion that we would 
 do well to stand in more surety as to what 
 we mean and what we do not mean.' 
 
 But I generalised too vaguely, I find, in this 
 merely indicative, merely suggestive paper, 
 when I wrote, * What is a Celtic Writer ? . . . 
 It is obvious that if one would write English 
 literature, one must write in English and in 
 the English tradition.' 
 
 Of course I meant nothing so narrow in 
 claim, so foreign to my conviction, as that one 
 must ' be English.' There is no ' must,' in the 
 Academic sense, in literature : the most vivid 
 and original literature has in truth ever been 
 an ignoring or overriding of this strong word 
 of the weak. 
 
 Only I can see how some I am glad to 
 know the few, not the many misread this 
 
 159 
 
 
For the sentence. For that, I welcome this oppor- 
 Beauty of tunity of the open word. There is no need 
 an Idea, ^ere to recur to the literal meaning of the 
 designation, a ' Celtic writer.' I would merely 
 add a further word of warning as to the some- 
 times apt epithet and definitive but often ill- 
 considered use of racial terms in speaking of 
 what are individual qualities and idiosyncrasies 
 rather than the habit of mind or general charac- 
 teristic of a people. Swedenborg, Blake, and 
 Maurice Maeterlinck do not stand for Scandi- 
 navian, and English, and Flemish mysticism, 
 nor is any of these a mystic by virtue of being 
 a Fleming, an Englishman, or a Scandinavian. 
 I recall the considered judgment of an acute 
 French critic, M. Angellier, in his essay on 
 Burns : ' The idea of race is fluctuating, ill- 
 established, open to dispute . . . you cannot 
 obtain a conception of the soul of a portion 
 of humanity by merely supplementing certain 
 ethnological labels with a few vague adjec- 
 tives.' 
 
 To consider those only, then, who write in 
 English, I would add to my statement that if 
 one would write English literature one must 
 write in English and in the English tradition, \ 
 the rider that the English language is not the ) 
 exclusive property of that section of our com- 
 plex race which is distinctively English, the 
 
 1 60 
 
English nation any more than it is the exclu- Prelude, 
 sive property of the Scots, who speak it ; or of 
 the Australians ; or of the Canadians ; or of 
 the vast and numerically superior American 
 nation. The language is common to all : all 
 share in the heritage shaped by the genius, 
 moulded by the life and thought, and trans- 
 mitted by the living spirit of the common 
 essential stock now as likely to be revealed 
 in Massachusetts as in Yorkshire, in Toronto 
 as in Edinburgh, in Sydney or Melbourne or 
 Washington, as in Dublin, Manchester, or 
 London. An American writes in his native 
 language when he writes in English : so does 
 a Scot, now: so does a Canadian, an Aus- 
 tralian, a New Zealander. Therefore the 
 literature of the Australians, the Scots, the 
 Irish, the Americans, must be in English. It is 
 the language that determines, but the thought 
 behind the language may come from any of 
 the several founts of nationality, to reveal, in 
 that language, its signature of the colour and 
 form of distinctive life. It is not the language 
 that compels genius, but genius that compels 
 the language. 
 
 Again, literature has laws as inevitable as 
 the laws which mould and determine the 
 destiny of nations. These can be evaded by 
 decay and death : they cannot be overridden. 
 
 L 161 
 
For the Every literature has its tradition of excellence 
 Beauty of that is, the sum of what within its own 
 an ea * limits can be achieved in beauty and power 
 and aptitude. This tradition of excellence is 
 what we call the central stream. Of course, if 
 one prefer the tributary, the backwater, the 
 offshoot, there is no reason why one should 
 not be well content within the chosen course. 
 To many it seems, for many it is, the better 
 way ; as the backwater for the kingfisher, the 
 offshoot or tributary for the solitary heron. 
 But one must not choose the backwater and 
 declare that it is the main stream, or have the 
 little tributary say that though it travels on 
 the great flow it is not part of the river. 
 
 That is what I meant when I said that if 
 one would write English literature one must 
 write in English and in the English tradition. 
 To say that was not to bid the Gael cease to 
 be Gaelic, any more than it would imply that 
 the American should cease to be American. 
 On the contrary, I do most strenuously believe 
 that the sole life of value in literature is in 
 the preservation of the distinct racial genius, 
 temper, colour, and contour. If the poetry 
 of two of the foremost Irish poets of to-day 
 did not conform to the laws and traditions of 
 English poetry since Mr. Yeats and Mr. 
 George Russell write in their native language, 
 
 162 
 
English, the language to which they were Prelude, 
 born and in which alone they can express 
 themselves it might be very interesting 
 ' Celtic ' or any other experimental verse, but 
 it would not be English poetry. The beauty 
 they breathe into their instrument is of them- 
 selves ; is individual certainly, and, in one 
 case at least, in spirit and atmosphere is more 
 distinctively Gaelic than English. But the 
 instrument is English : and to summon beauty 
 through it, and to give the phantom a body 
 and spirit of excellence, one must follow in the 
 footsteps of the master-musicians, recognising 
 the same essential limitations, observing the 
 same fundamental needs, fulfilling the like 
 rigorous obligations of mastery. 
 
 Since we have to write in English, we must 
 accept the burthen and responsibility. If a 
 Cretan write in the Cretan dialect, he can be 
 estimated by those who know Cretan ; but if 
 he is ambitious to have his irregular measures 
 and corrupt speech called Greek poetry, he 
 must write in Greek and conform in what is 
 essential to the Greek tradition, to the laws 
 and limitations of the Greek genius. The 
 Englishman, the Scot, the Irishman, the 
 American, each, if he would write English 
 literature, has of necessity to do likewise. 
 
 In a very true sense, therefore, there can 
 163 
 
For the be an Irish literature, a Scottish literature, an 
 Beauty of Anglo-Gaelic literature, as well as an English 
 an Idea, literature ; but in the wider sense it is all 
 English literature with, as may be, an Irish 
 spirit and Irish ideals and Irish colour, or with 
 a Highland spirit and Highland ideals and 
 Highland colour, or with a Welsh spirit and 
 Welsh ideals and Welsh colour as Mr. 
 Thomas Hardy's writings are English litera- 
 ture, with an English spirit and English ideals 
 and an English colour. 
 
 It is the desire and faith of the Irish nation 
 to mould anew a literature as distinctively its 
 own as the English nation has a literature 
 that is distinctively its own : and to do this, 
 in Ireland or the like in Scotland, is possible 
 only by the cultivation, the persistent preser- 
 vation of the national spirit, of the national 
 idiosyncrasy, the national ideals. I would see 
 our peoples reconciled, where reconciliation 
 is just and therefore wise ; believing that in 
 such reconciliation lie the elements of strength 
 and advance, of noble growth and conquering 
 influence : but I would not have reconciliation 
 at any price, and would rather we should 
 dwell isolate and hostile than purchase peace 
 at the cost of relinquishment of certain things 
 more precious than all prosperities and 
 triumphs. The law of love is the nobler way, 
 
 164 
 
but there is also a divine law of hate. I do Prelude, 
 not advocate, and have never advocated, a 
 reconciliation on any terms. I am not English, 
 and have not the English mind or the English 
 temper, and in many things do not share the 
 English ideals ; and to possess these would 
 mean to relinquish my own heritage. But 
 why should I be irreconcilably hostile to that 
 mind and that temper and those ideals? Why 
 should I not do my utmost to understand, 
 sympathise, fall into line with them so far as 
 may be, since we have all a common bond 
 and a common destiny ? 
 
 To that mind and that temper and those 
 ideals do we not owe some of the noblest 
 achievements of the human race, some of the 
 lordliest conquests over the instincts and forces 
 of barbarism, some of the loveliest and most 
 deathless things of the spirit and the imagina- 
 tion ? 
 
 Let us beware of kneading husks with 
 Maya's dew, and so as in the ancient gnome 
 attributed to Krishna create but food for 
 the black doves of decay and death. 
 
 As for the Gaelic remnant (and none can 
 pretend that this means Scotland and Ireland, 
 but only a portion of Scotland and only a 
 divided Ireland) I am ever but the more 
 convinced that the dream of an outward 
 
For the independence is a perilous illusion not 
 
 Beauty of because it is impracticable, for that alone is 
 
 an idea. a f asc j na tion to us, but because it does not, 
 
 cannot alas, reveal those dominant elements 
 
 which alone can control dreams become 
 
 actualities. Another and greater independence 
 
 is within our reach, is ours, to preserve and 
 
 ennoble. 
 
 Strange reversals, strange fulfilments may 
 lie on the lap of the gods, but we have no 
 knowledge of these, and hear neither the high 
 laughter nor the far voices. But we front a 
 possible because a spiritual destiny greater 
 than the height of imperial fortunes, and have 
 that which may send our voices further than 
 the trumpets of east and west. Through ages 
 of slow westering, till now we face the sun- 
 down seas, we have learned in continual 
 vicissitude that there are secret ways whereon 
 armies cannot march. And this has been 
 given to us, a more ardent longing, a more 
 rapt passion in the things of outward beauty 
 and in the things of spiritual beauty. Nor it 
 seems to me is there any sadness, or only the 
 serene sadness of a great day's end, that, to 
 others, we reveal in our best the genius of a 
 race whose farewell is in a tragic lighting of 
 torches of beauty around its grave. 
 
 1 66 
 
For the Beauty of an Idea 
 
 n 
 
 CELTIC 
 

 c Search first at home: a fitting 
 glory hast thou got there.' PINDAR. 
 
 OED : * And where are the young 
 men, thy brothers, at our need ? ' 
 
 ISMEN : ( They are . . . where 
 they are: 'tis their dark hour.' 
 
 SOPHOCLES : Oedipus at Kolonos. 
 
FOR THE BEAUTY OF AN IDEA 
 
 n 
 
 CELTIC 
 
 ' Yea, point thine arrow 
 at a noble spirit, and thou 
 shalt not miss. ' 
 
 SOPHOCLES: Aias. 
 
 A WRITER might well be proud to be identi- 
 fied with a movement that is primarily spiritual 
 and eager, a movement of quickened artistic 
 life. I, for one, care less to be identified with 
 any literary movement avowedly partisan. 
 That is not the deliberate view of literature, 
 which carries with it the heat and confused 
 passions of the many. It is not the deliber- 
 ate view, which confers passions that are 
 fugitive upon that troubled Beauty which 
 knows only a continual excellence. It is not 
 the deliberate view, which would impose the 
 penury of distracted dreams and desires upon 
 those who go up to the treasure house and to 
 white palaces. 
 
 But I am somewhat tired of an epithet that, 
 169 
 
For the in a certain association, is become jejune, 
 Beauty of through use and misuse. It has grown 
 an Idea. f am iii ar wrongly ; is often a term of praise or 
 disdain, in each inept; is applied without 
 moderation ; and so now is sometimes unwel- 
 come even when there is none other so apt 
 and right. 
 
 The * Celtic Movement,' in the first place, 
 is not, as so often confusedly stated, an arbi- 
 trary effort to reconstruct the past ; though it 
 is, in part, an effort to discover the past. For 
 myself (as one imputed to this ' movement ') 
 I would say that I do not seek merely to 
 reproduce ancient Celtic presentments of 
 tragic beauty and tragic fate, but do seek in 
 nature and in life, and in the swimming 
 thought of timeless imagination, for the kind 
 of beauty that the old Celtic poets discovered 
 and uttered. There were poets and myth- 
 makers in those days ; and to-day we may be 
 sure that a new Mythus is being woven, 
 though we may no longer regard with the old 
 wonder, or in the old wonder imaginatively 
 shape and colour the forces of Nature and her 
 silent and secret processes ; for the mythopceic 
 faculty is not only a primitive instinct but a 
 spiritual need. 
 
 I do not suppose our Celtic ancestors for 
 all their high civilisation and development, so 
 
 170 
 
much beyond what obtained among the Celtic. 
 Anglo-Saxon or Teutonic peoples at the same 
 date theorised about their narrative art; but 
 from what we know of their literature, from 
 the most ancient bardic chants to the sgeul of 
 to-day, we cannot fail to see that the instinc- 
 tive ideal was to represent beautiful life. It 
 is an ideal that has lain below the spiritual 
 passion of all great art in every period. 
 Phidias knew it when he culled a white 
 beauty from the many Athenian youth, and 
 Leonardo when he discerned the inexplicable 
 in woman's beauty and painted Mona Lisa, 
 and Palestrina when from the sound in the 
 pines and the voice of the wind in solitudes 
 and the songs of labourers at sundown he 
 wove a solemn music for cathedral aisles. 
 With instinct, the old Celtic poets and roman- 
 cists knew it : there are no Breton ballads nor 
 Cymric mabinogion nor Gaelic sgeulan which 
 deal ignobly with petty life. All the evil 
 passions may obtain there, but they move 
 against a spiritual background of pathetic 
 wonder, of tragic beauty and tragic fate. 
 
 The ideal of art should be to represent 
 beautiful life. If we want a vision of life that 
 is not beautiful, we can have it otherwise : a 
 multitude can depict the ignoble; the lens 
 can replicate the usual. 
 
 171 
 
 
For the It should be needless to add that our vision 
 Beauty of of the beautiful must be deep and wide and 
 an Idea, virile, as well as high and ideal. When we 
 say that art should represent beautiful life, we 
 do not say that it should represent only the 
 beautiful in life, which would be to ignore the 
 roots and the soil and the vivid sap, and 
 account the blossom only. The vision of 
 beautiful life is the vision of life seen not in 
 impossible but in possible relief: of har- 
 monious unity in design as well as in colour. 
 To say that art should represent beautiful life 
 is merely to give formal expression to the one 
 passionate instinct in every poet and painter 
 and musician, in every artist There is no 
 * art ' saved by a moral purpose, though all 
 true art is subtly informed of the spirit ; but 
 I know none, with pen or brush, with chisel 
 or score, which, ignobly depicting the ignoble, 
 survives in excellence. 
 
 In this, one cannot well go astray. Nor do 
 I seek an unreal Ideal. In the kingdom of 
 the imagination, says Calvert, one of our 
 forgotten mystics, the ideal must ever be 
 faithful to the general laws of nature else- 
 where adding a truth as immanent : ' Man is 
 not alone : the Angel of the Presence of the 
 Infinite is with him.' I do not, with Blake, 
 look upon our world as though it were at best 
 
 172 
 
a basis for transcendental vision, while in itself Celtic. 
 * a hindrance and a mistake/ but rather, as a 
 wiser has said, to an Earth spiritualised, not a 
 Heaven naturalised. With Calvert, too, I 
 would say, ' I have a fondness for the earth, 
 and rather a Phrygian way of regarding it, 
 despite a deeper yearning to see its glades 
 receding into the Gardens of Heaven/ 
 
 There is cause for deep regret when any 
 word, that has peculiar associations of beauty 
 or interest, or in which some distinction 
 obtains, is lightly bandied. Its merit is then 
 in convenience of signal rather than in its own 
 significance. It is easy to recall some of these 
 unfortunates ; as our Scottish word ' gloam- 
 ing/ that is so beautiful, and is now, alas, to 
 be used rarely and with heed ; as ' haunting/ 
 with its implicit kinship with all mysteries 
 of shadow, and its present low estate; as 
 ' melody/ that has an outworn air, though it 
 has three secrets of beauty ; as others, that 
 one or two use with inevitableness, and a 
 small number deftly, till the journal has it, 
 and it is come into desuetude. 
 
 We have of late heard so much of Celtic 
 beauty and Celtic emotion that we would do 
 
 173 
 
For the well to stand in more surety as to what we 
 Beauty of mean and what we do not mean, 
 an Idea. j ( j o not mvse if k nO w any beauty that is of 
 art to excel that bequeathed to us by Greece. 
 The marble has outlasted broken dynasties 
 and lost empires : the word is to-day fresh as 
 with dews of dawn. But through the heart I 
 travel into another land. Through the heart, 
 I go to lost gardens, to mossed fountains, to 
 groves where is no white beauty of still statue, 
 but only the beauty of an old forgotten day 
 remembered with quickened pulse and desired 
 with I know not what of longing and weariness. 
 Is it remembrance, I wonder often, that 
 makes many of us of the Celtic peoples turn 
 to our own past with a longing so great, a love 
 perfected through forgotten tribulations and 
 familiar desire of the things we know to be 
 impossible but so fair ? Or do we but desire 
 in memory what all primitive races had, and 
 confuse our dreams with those which have no 
 peace because they are immortal ? 
 
 If one can think with surety but a little way 
 back into the past, one can divine through 
 both the heart and the mind. I do not think 
 that our broken people had no other memories 
 and traditions than other peoples had. I 
 believe they stood more near to ancient for- 
 gotten founts of wisdom than others stood : I 
 
 174 
 

 believe that they are the offspring of a race Celtic, 
 who were in a more fraternal communion with 
 the secret powers of the world. I think their 
 ancient writings show it, their ancient legends, 
 their subtle and spiritual mythology. I believe 
 that, in the east, they lit the primitive genius 
 of their race at unknown and mysterious fires; 
 that, in the ages, they have not wholly for- 
 gotten the ancestral secret ; that, in the west, 
 they may yet turn from the grey wave that 
 they see, and the grey wave of time that they 
 do not see, and again, upon new altars, commit 
 that primeval fire. 
 
 But to believe is one thing, to convince is 
 another. Those of us who believe thus have 
 no warrant to show. It may well be that we 
 do but create an image made after the desire 
 and faith of the heart. 
 
 It is not the occasion to speak of what I do 
 believe the peculiar and excelling beauty of 
 the Celtic genius and Celtic literature to be ; 
 how deep its well-springs, how full of strange 
 new beauty to us who come upon it that is so 
 old and remote. What I have just written 
 will disclose that wherever else I may desire 
 to worship, there is one beauty that has to me 
 the light of home upon it ; that there is one 
 beauty from which, above all others now, I 
 hope for a new revelation ; that there is a 
 
For the love, there is a passion, there is a romance, 
 Beauty of which to me calls more suddenly and search- 
 an Idea, ingly than any other ancient love or ancient 
 passion or ancient romance. 
 
 But having said this, I am the more free to 
 speak what I have in view. Let me say at 
 once, then, that I am not a great believer in 
 ' movements,' and still less in ' renascences' ; to 
 be more exact, I hold myself in a suspicion 
 towards these terms ; for often, in the one, 
 what we look for is not implicit, and in the 
 other, we are apt rather to find the excrescent 
 and the deciduous. 
 
 So far as I understand the 'Celtic Move- 
 ment,' it is a natural outcome, the natural 
 expression of a freshly inspired spiritual and 
 artistic energy. That this expression is 
 coloured by racial temperament is its dis- 
 tinction ; that it is controlled to novel usage 
 is its opportunity. When we look for its 
 source we find it in the usufruct of an ancient 
 and beautiful treasure of national tradition. 
 One may the more aptly speak thus collec- 
 tively of a mythology and a literature, and a 
 vast and wonderful legendary folklore, since 
 to us, now, it is in great part hidden behind 
 veils of an all but forgotten tongue, and of a 
 system of life and customs, ideals and thought, 
 that no longer obtains. 
 
 176 
 

 I am unable, however, to see that it has Celtic, 
 sustenance in continuity of revolt. A new 
 movement need not be a revolt, but rather a 
 sortie to carry a fresh position. If a move- 
 ment has any inherent force, it will not destroy 
 itself in forlorn hopes, but, where the need is 
 vital, will fall into line, and so achieve where 
 alone the desired success can be achieved. 
 
 There is no racial road to beauty, nor to 
 any excellence. Genius, which leads thither, 
 beckons neither to tribe nor clan, neither to 
 school nor movement, but only to one soul 
 here and to another there ; so that the Ice- 
 lander hears and speaks in Saga, and the 
 brown Malay hears and carves delicately in 
 ivory ; and the men in Europe, from the Serb 
 and the Finn to the Basque and the Breton, 
 hear, and each in his kind answers ; and what 
 the Englishman says in song and romance 
 and the deep utterance of his complex life, his 
 mountain-kindred say in mabinogi or sgeul. 
 
 Even in those characteristics which dis- 
 tinguish Celtic literature intimate natural 
 vision ; a swift emotion that is sometimes a 
 spiritual ecstasy, but sometimes is also a mere 
 intoxication of the senses ; a peculiar sensi- 
 tiveness to the beauty of what is remote and 
 solitary ; a rapt pleasure in what is ancient 
 and in the contemplation of what holds an 
 
 M 177 
 
 
For the indwelling melancholy ; a visionary passion 
 Beauty of for beauty, which is of the immortal things, 
 an Idea, beyond the temporal beauty of what is mutable 
 and mortal even in these characteristics it 
 does not stand alone, and perhaps not pre- 
 eminent. There is a beauty in the Homeric 
 hymns that I do not find in the most beautiful 
 of Celtic chants ; none could cull from the 
 gardens of the Gael what in the Greek an- 
 thology has been gathered out of time to be 
 everlasting ; perhaps only the love and passion 
 of the stories of the Celtic mythology surpass 
 the love and passion of the stories of the 
 Hellenic mythology. The romance that of 
 old flowered among the Gaelic hills flowered 
 also in English meads, by Danish shores, 
 along Teutonic woods and plains. I think 
 Catullus sang more excellently than Baile 
 Honeymouth, and that Theocritus loved 
 nature not less than Oisin, and that the 
 ancient makers of the Kalevala were as much 
 children of the wind and wave and the inti- 
 mate natural world as were the makers of the 
 ancient heroic chronicles of the Gael. 
 
 There is no law set upon beauty. It has no 
 geography. It is the domain of the spirit. 
 And if, of those who enter there, peradventure 
 any comes again, he is welcome for what he 
 brings ; nor do we demand if he be dark or 
 
fair, Latin or Teuton or Celt, or say of him Celtic, 
 that his tidings are lovelier or the less lovely 
 because he was born in the shadow of Gaelic 
 hills or nurtured by Celtic shores. 
 
 It is well that each should learn the mother- 
 song of his land at the cradle-place of his birth. 
 It is well that the people of the isles should 
 love the isles above all else, and the people of 
 the mountains love the mountains above all 
 else, and the people of the plains love the 
 plains above all else. But it is not well that 
 because of the whistling of the wind in the 
 heather one should imagine that nowhere else 
 does the wind suddenly stir the reeds and the 
 grasses in its incalculable hour. 
 
 When I hear that a new writer is of the 
 Celtic school, I am left in some uncertainty, 
 for I know of many Anglo-Celtic writers but 
 of no ' school,' or what present elements would 
 form a school. What is a Celtic writer ? If 
 the word has any exact acceptance, it must 
 denote an Irish or a Scottish Gael, a Cymric 
 or Breton Celt, who writes in the language of 
 his race. It is obvious that if one would 
 write English literature, one must write in 
 English and in the English tradition. 
 
 When I hear, therefore, of this or that 
 writer as a Celtic writer, I wonder if the term 
 is not apt to be misleading. An English 
 
 179 
 
For the writer is meant, who in person happens to be 
 Beauty of an i r i sn Gael, or Highland, or Welsh, 
 an Idea. j j iaye a j rea( jy suggested what other misuse 
 of the word obtains : Celtic emotion, Celtic 
 love of nature, Celtic visionariness. That, as 
 admitted, there is in the Celtic peoples an 
 emotionalism peculiar in kind and certainly 
 in intensity, is not to be denied ; that a love 
 of nature is characteristic is true, but differing 
 only, if at all, in certain intimacies of approach ; 
 that visionariness is relatively so common as 
 to be typical, is obvious. But there is English 
 emotion, English love of nature, English 
 visionariness, as there is Dutch, or French, 
 or German, or Russian, or Hindu. There is 
 no exclusive national heritage in these things, 
 save in the accident of racial physiognomy, of 
 the supreme felicity of contour and colour. 
 At a hundred yards a forest is seen to con- 
 sist of ash and lime, of elms, beeches, oaks, 
 horn-beams; but a mile away it is, simply, 
 a forest. 
 
 I do not know any Celtic visionary so 
 rapt and absolute as the Londoner William 
 Blake, or the Scandinavian Swedenborg, or 
 the Flemish Ruysbroek ; or any Celtic poet 
 of nature to surpass the Englishman Keats ; 
 nor do I think even religious ecstasy is more 
 seen in Ireland than in Italy. 
 
 1 80 
 
Nothing but harm is done by a protestation Celtic, 
 that cannot persuade deliberate acceptance. 
 
 When I hear that ' only a Celt ' could have 
 written this or that passage of emotion or 
 description, I am become impatient of these 
 parrot-cries, for I remember that if all Celtic 
 literature were to disappear, the world would 
 not be so impoverished as by the loss of 
 English literature, or French literature, or 
 that of Rome or of Greece. 
 
 But above all else it is time that a prevalent 
 pseudo-nationalism should be dissuaded. I 
 am proud to be a Highlander, but I would not 
 side with those who would ' set the heather on 
 fire.' If I were Irish, I would be proud, but 
 I would not lower my pride by marrying it to 
 a ceaseless ill-will, an irreconcilable hate, for 
 there can be a nobler pride in unvanquished 
 acquiescence than in futile revolt. I would be 
 proud if I were Welsh, but I would not refuse 
 to learn English, or to mix with English as 
 equals. And proud as I might be to be High- 
 land, or Scottish, or Irish, or Welsh, or English, 
 I would be more proud to be British for, 
 there at last, we have a bond to unite us all, 
 and to give us space for every ideal, whether 
 communal or individual, whether national or 
 spiritual. 
 
 As for literature, there is, for us all, only 
 1*1 
 
For the English literature. All else is provincial or 
 
 Beauty of dialectic. 
 
 an Idea. But g i a( iiy I, f or one, am willing to be 
 designated Celtic, if the word signify no more 
 than that one is an English writer who by 
 birth, inheritance, and temperament has an 
 outlook not distinctively English, with some 
 memories and traditions and ideals not shared 
 in by one's countrymen of the South, with a 
 racial instinct that informs what one writes, 
 and, for the rest, a common heritage. 
 
 The Celtic element in our national life has 
 a vital and great part to play. We have a 
 most noble ideal if we will but accept it. And 
 that is, not to perpetuate feuds, not to try to 
 win back what is gone away upon the wind, 
 not to repay ignorance with scorn, or dulness 
 with contempt, or past wrongs with present 
 hatred, but so to live, so to pray, so to hope, 
 so to work, so to achieve, that we, what is left 
 of the Celtic races, of the Celtic genius, may 
 permeate the greater race of which we are a 
 vital part, so that with this Celtic emotion, 
 Celtic love of beauty, and Celtic spirituality a 
 nation greater than any the world has seen 
 may issue, a nation refined and strengthened 
 by the wise relinquishings and steadfast ideals 
 of Celt and Saxon, united in a common father- 
 land, and in singleness of pride and faith. 
 
 182 
 
As I have said, I am not concerned here Celtic, 
 with what I think the Celtic genius has done 
 for the world, and for English literature in 
 particular, and, above all, for us of to-day and 
 to-morrow ; nor can I dwell upon what of 
 beautiful and mysterious and wonderful it 
 discloses, or upon its bitter-sweet charm. But 
 of a truth, the inward sense and significance 
 of the ' Celtic Movement ' is, as has been well 
 said by Mr. Yeats, in the opening of a foun- 
 tain of legends, and, as scholars aver, a more 
 abundant fountain than any in Europe, the 
 great fountain of Gaelic legends. ' None can 
 measure of how great importance it may be 
 to coming times, for every new fountain of 
 legends is a new intoxication for the imagina- 
 tion of the world. It comes at a time when 
 the imagination of the world is as ready, as it 
 was at the coming of the tales of Arthur and 
 of the Grail, for a new intoxication. The arts 
 have become religious, and must, as religious 
 thought has always done, utter themselves 
 through legends ; and the Gaelic legends have 
 so much of a new beauty that they may well 
 give the opening century its most memorable 
 symbols.' 
 
 Perhaps the most significant sentence in 
 M. Kenan's remarkable study of the Poetry 
 of the Celtic Races is that where he speaks of 
 
 183 
 
For the the Celtic race as having worn itself out in 
 Beauty of mistaking dreams for realities. I am not cer- 
 an Idea. ta j n ^^ ^^ - true> j^ -^ holds so g re at a 
 
 part of the truth that it should make us think 
 upon how we stand. 
 
 I think our people have most truly loved 
 their land, and their country, and their songs, 
 and their ancient traditions, and that the word 
 of bitterest savour is that sad word exile. But 
 it is also true that in that love we love vaguely 
 another land, a rainbow-land, and that our 
 most desired country is not the real Ireland, 
 the real Scotland, the real Brittany, but the 
 vague Land of Youth, the shadowy Land of 
 Heart's Desire. And it is also true, that deep 
 in the songs we love above all other songs is a 
 lamentation for what is gone away from the 
 world, rather than merely from us as a people, 
 or a sighing of longing for what the heart 
 desires but no mortal destiny requites. And 
 true, too, that no tradition from of old is so 
 compelling as the compelling tradition that is 
 from within ; and that the long sorrow of our 
 exile is in part because we ourselves have 
 driven from us that company of hopes and 
 dreams which were once realities, but are 
 now among beautiful idle words. 
 
 In a word, we dwell overmuch among 
 desired illusions : beautiful, when, like the 
 
 184 
 
rainbow, they are the spiritual reflection of Celtic, 
 certainties ; but worthless as the rainbow-gold 
 with which the Shee deceive the unwary, when 
 what is the phantom of a spiritual desire is 
 taken to be the reality of material fact. 
 
 And I think that we should be on guard 
 against any abuse of, that we should consider 
 this other side of, our dreams and ideals, 
 wherein awaits weakness as well as abides 
 strength. It is not ill to dream, in a day 
 when there are too few who will withdraw 
 from a continual business, a day when there 
 are fewer dreams. But we shall not greatly 
 gain if we dream only of beautiful abstrac- 
 tions, and not also of actual or imaginative 
 realities and possibilities. In a Highland cot- 
 tage I heard some time ago a man singing 
 a lament for 'Tearlach Og Aluinn,' Bonnie 
 Prince Charlie; and when he ceased tears 
 were on the face of each that was there, and 
 in his own throat a sob. I asked him, later, 
 was his heart really so full of the Prionnsa 
 Ban, but he told me that it was not him he 
 was thinking of, but of all the dead men and 
 women of Scotland who had died for his sake, 
 and of Scotland itself, and of the old days that 
 could not come again. I did not ask what old 
 days, for I knew that in his heart he lamented 
 his own dead hopes and dreams, and that the 
 
 185 
 

 For the prince was but the image of his lost youth, 
 Beauty of and that the world was old and grey because 
 an Idea. o n j s own we ariness and his own grief. 
 
 Sometimes I fear that we who as a people 
 do so habitually companion ourselves with 
 dreams may fall into that abyss where the 
 realities are become shadows, and shadows 
 alone live and move. And then I remember 
 that dreamers and visionaries are few ; that 
 we are no such people; that no such people 
 has ever been ; and that of all idle weaving of 
 sand and foam none is more idle than this, the 
 strange instinctive dread of the multitude, 
 that the few whose minds and imaginations 
 dwell among noble memories and immortal 
 desires shall supersede the many who are 
 content with lesser memories and ignoble 
 desires. 
 
 1 86 
 
For the Beauty of an Idea 
 
 in 
 
 THE GAELIC 
 HEART 
 
' Beloved and most beautiful, who wearest 
 The shadow of that soul by which I live.' 
 f Prometheus Unbound.' 
 
FOR THE BEAUTY OF AN IDEA 
 
 in 
 
 THE GAELIC 
 HEART 
 
 ONE day, on lona, I met an old woman who 
 had been gathering driftwood in the haven 
 called Port-na-Churaich the haven of the 
 coracle, for it was there St. Colum landed on 
 the day Christ's hand steered the helm to the 
 Holy Isle. She was weary with her burthen, 
 and had rested on a ledge of granite, and there 
 had fallen asleep. I stood a long time looking 
 at her. I had not seen her for some years, 
 not since the death of her daughter in the 
 Sleat of Skye : but it was not at the wayworn 
 sadness of the old figure I was looking, though 
 that was in my thoughts. I was thinking of 
 what I had heard of her. Long ago a poet 
 of the isles had put song upon song on her, 
 as the saying is : and one known to all of us 
 
 189 
 
For the had made an oran-ghaoil about her which is 
 Beauty of still sung from the Rhinns of Islay to The 
 an Idea. Seven Hunters. When I was a child I had 
 heard often of the beauty of Mary Macarthur. 
 But sorrow, which had long lain as upon a 
 rock on the hills, looking at her, had come 
 suddenly in the twilight, when all was well, 
 and took her heart in fierce swift hands, and 
 wrung it, and it was as tide-wrack left by the 
 ebb on dry sand. She was old, and her 
 beauty was gone away from her like a rainbow 
 lifted from a wilderness, long before the last 
 of her partings came to her in Sleat of Skye. 
 
 She too had been known for her songs. 
 They were pastoral and sweet, or of the sea and 
 wild and lamenting. One, telling of the small, 
 shaggy, long-horned kye coming with a young 
 herd-girl over the braes in mist and crowding 
 upon a loosened cliff, and so falling into the 
 surge of the tides a thousand feet below, is 
 well known among the few who remember 
 such things in the old tongue that is being 
 so swiftly forgotten : another, of the sea-bulls, 
 is a favourite iorram of the boatmen of the 
 middle isles : and Eachan MacDougall, the 
 blind poet of Skye, used to sing to women 
 in the twilight, over the kindly tea or sup 
 of milk and porridge, her seven strange sad 
 songs that are called * A Day in My Heart/ 
 
 190 
 
It was these only I recalled now. They The 
 tell the lives of many women. There is the Gaelic 
 dawn-song of wonder and joy, the morning- Heart, 
 song of the proud heart, the noon-song of 
 the sleeping passions and sleeping thoughts, 
 the afternoon song of longing and blind 
 anger and pain, the gloaming song of regret 
 and tears and silence, the nightfall song of 
 revolt and the heart aflame, and the mid- 
 night song that is not sung, but is smothered 
 in ashes, or drowned in deep water, or burned 
 in the fierceness of fire. In Eachan-Dall's 
 poem, he says her beauty is the beauty of the 
 morning star in June, when it is a white fire 
 in a rose of flame. He says her grace is the 
 grace of the larch in an April wind, of a reed 
 in shaken waters, of a wave tost like a white 
 flower in the blue hair of the sea, of a fawn 
 moving through bracken in the green dusk 
 of old trees. He says men will remember 
 her beauty till they are old ; and their sons 
 shall remember it ; and their son's sons. He 
 says, ' Surely in this fair woman's heart is 
 great joy and pride, for she will be beautiful 
 and glad all the days of her life.' And I 
 recall the last of her songs, ' Flame on the 
 Wind.' I cannot give it aright in English, 
 for its long mournful cadences, lifted on tides 
 of passionate vain regret and old grief, need 
 
 191 
 
For the the language of the old world that has in it 
 
 Beauty of so much of the sound of wind in trees and the 
 
 an Idea, lamentation of wind and the sighing of waters. 
 
 I thought of it as I looked at old Mary Mac- 
 
 arthur, and of the ending of one verse : 
 
 O burning soul, 
 Can hills of ice assuage this burning fire ? 
 
 And then I remembered one of her love-songs, 
 she who had known so much love, and had 
 thrown treasures down barren rocks into the 
 cold seas, and had made a flaming universe 
 and eternity out of the pale hour of a wintry 
 noon. 
 
 It is dark here, my Love, my Pulse, my Heart, my 
 
 Flame : 
 Dark the night, dark with wind and cloud, the wind 
 
 without aim 
 
 Baffled and blind, the cloud low, broken, dragging, lame, 
 And a stir in the darkness at the end of the room 
 
 sighing my name, whispering my name ! 
 
 Is that the sea calling, or the hounds of the sea, or the 
 
 wind's hounds ? 
 
 * * * * * 
 
 Great is that dark noise under the black north wind 
 Out on the sea to-night : but still it is still as the frosts 
 
 that bind 
 The stark inland waters in green depths where icebergs 
 
 grind 
 In this noise of shaking storm in my heart and this blast 
 
 sweeping my mind ! 
 
 192 
 
And now nothing of all this left, nothing but The 
 a tired old woman, sad-eyed and furrowed, Gaelic 
 poorly clad, a gatherer of driftwood. Hills Heart - 
 of ice had in truth assuaged this burning fire. 
 The noise of shaking storm had ebbed from 
 the troubled heart ; no blast now swept the 
 mind, but only the chill airs of winter froze 
 dreams and all old sweet thoughts, perhaps 
 memories even. Poor old woman, how white 
 and old and withered she looked, so forlorn 
 in her poor frayed clothes, in the sleep of 
 weariness, among the yellowing bracken by 
 the granite rock. Was it all gone, I wondered : 
 all the dream, the wonder, the flame ? Were 
 they all gone, noons of passionate life, twilights 
 of peace and recaptured hopes, nights uplifted 
 in dreams or shaken with tears and longings ? 
 
 While I was dreaming and wondering, won- 
 dering and dreaming, old Mary stirred, and 
 opened her eyes. At first sleep was heavy 
 on her, and I saw she was not yet rightly 
 awake. 
 
 * Do not stir,' I said, ' and I will sit down 
 here beside you, Mairi nic Ruaridh Donn.' 
 At that, and the familiar name, she knew me, 
 and was glad to tears, and welcomed me over 
 and over, as though I had come in some 
 impossible way out of the irrecoverable past. 
 
 ' Yes, I had the tiredness indeed,' she added 
 
 N 193 
 
For the after a little, ' but what of that ? For I had 
 Beauty of the good sleep, and a thousand things of 
 an Idea, goodness more, for I had a dream of dreams. 
 Do I remember it ? Yes, for sure, I have it 
 as clear as a cradle. I was lying here, just as 
 I will be now, with this faggot here too, when 
 a woman of beauty came up the path and 
 took the faggot and flung all the sticks an' 
 ends into the sea. " What will you be doing, 
 lady ? " I said, but not in anger, only in the 
 great wonder. " Tis your sorrows I 'm 
 throwing away," she said, with a voice as 
 sweet as to send the birds to the branches 
 chuireadh e na Jieoin 'an crannaibk. "It is 
 glad of that I am," I said, " for it is many of 
 them I have." Then she said, " You '11 have 
 peace, Mary, and great joy, and your songs 
 and your beauty will never die." So the tears 
 were at me at that, an' I cried, "It is only an 
 aisling you are ... a dream and a vision ! " 
 " No," she said, " an' by the same token, 
 Mary, 1 11 tell you the song that you were 
 singing below your breath down there on the 
 shore : 
 
 ' A Dhe na mara 
 Cuir todhar 's an tarruinn 
 Chon tachair an talaimh 
 Chon bailcidh dhuinn biaidh/ " 
 
 And sure, an' in truth, these were the very 
 
 194 
 
words I was singing to myself down there on The 
 the shore . . . "O God of the Sea, fill the Gaelic 
 sea- wave with store of the good weed, to feed Heart% 
 the soil that will give us food." And at that 
 my heart sank with fear and rose with glad- 
 ness, for who could this be but ... an' sure 
 before I could put word to it, she said / am 
 Brighid. I went on the knees, and cried 
 gach la agus oidche thoir duinn do sheimh 
 " each day and night give us thy peace." And 
 I was putting another word to it, for her, fair 
 Foster- Mother of Christ, when she looked at 
 me and said, " I am older than Brighid of the 
 Mantle, Mary, and it is you that should know 
 that. I put songs and music on the wind 
 before ever the bells of the chapels were rung 
 in the West or heard in the East. I am 
 Brighid-nam-Bratta, but I am also Brighid- 
 Muirghin-na-tuinne, and Brighid-sluagh, Brig- 
 hid-nan-sitheach seang, Brighid- Binne-Bheul- 
 Ihuchd-nan-trusganan-uaine, and I am older 
 than Aona and am as old as Luan. And hi 
 Tir na h'oige my name is Suibhal-bheann ; in 
 Tir-fo-thuinn it is Cu-gorm; and in Tir na 
 h'oise it is Sireadh-thall. And I have been a 
 breath in your heart. And the day has its 
 feet to it that will see me coming into the 
 hearts of men and women like a flame upon 
 dry grass, like a flame of wind in a great wood. 
 
 *95 
 
For the For the time of change is at hand, Mairi nic 
 
 Beauty of Ruaridh Donn though not for you, old 
 
 an Idea, withered leaf on the dry branch, though for 
 
 you, too, when you come to us and see all 
 
 things in the pools of life yonder." 
 
 ' And at that I closed my eyes, and said the 
 
 line of the old poem that you will be knowing 
 
 well, the Laoidh Fhraoch Bu bhinne na 
 
 farch-chiuil do ghuth sweeter thy voice than 
 
 the sweetest lute. 
 
 'And when I opened them she was not 
 there, but I was an old woman on the brae 
 above Port-na-Churaich, and when I looked 
 again it was you I saw and no other.' J 
 
 1 St. Brighid (in Gaelic pronounced sometimes Bride, some- 
 times Breed), St. Bride of the Isles as she is lovingly called in 
 the Hebrides, has no name so dear to the Gael as 'Muime- 
 Chriosd,' Christ's Foster-Mother, a name bestowed on her by 
 one of the most beautiful of Celtic legends. In the isles of 
 Gaelic Scotland her most familiar name is Brighid nam Bratta 
 St. Bridget or St. Bride of the Mantle from her having wrapt 
 the new-born Babe in her Mantle in Mary's hour of weakness. 
 She did not come into the Gaelic heart with the Cross and Mary, 
 but was there long before as Bride, Brighid or Brithid of the 
 Dedannans, those not immortal but for long ages deathless folk 
 who to the Gael were as the Olympians to the Greeks. That 
 earlier Brighid was goddess of poetry and music, one of the 
 three great divinities of love, goddess of women, the keeper of 
 prophecies and dreams, the watcher of the greater destinies, the 
 guardian of the future. I think she was no other than a Celtic 
 Demeter that Demeter-Desphoena born of the embrace of 
 Poseidon, who in turn is no other than Lir, the Oceanus of the 
 
 196 
 
I have thought often of old MaryMacarthur, The 
 and of her dream of holy St. Bride, and of Gaelic 
 that older Brighid of the West, Mother of Heart 
 Songs and Music she who breathes in the 
 reed, on the wind, in the hearts of women 
 and in the minds of poets. For I too have 
 my dream, my memory of one whom as a 
 child I called Star-Eyes, and whom, later, 1 
 called ( Banmorair-na-mara,' the Lady of the 
 Sea, and whom at last I knew to be no other 
 than the woman that is in the heart of women. 
 I was not more than seven when one day, by 
 a well, near a sea-loch in Argyll, just as I was 
 
 Gael: and instead of Demeter seeking and lamenting Perse- 
 phone in the underworld, it is Demeter-Brighid seeking her 
 brother (or, it may be, her son) Manan (Manannan), God of the 
 Sea, son of Oceanus, Lir and finding him at last in Iceland, 
 etc. as I write here a little further on. Persephone and 
 Manan are symbols of the same Return of Life. 
 
 The other names are old Gaelic names : Brighid- Muirghin-na- 
 tuinne, Brighid-Conception-of-the- Waves; Brighid-Sluagh (or 
 Sloigh), Brighid of the Immortal Host ; Brighid-nan-Sitheach- 
 seang, Bridget of the Slim Fairy Folk; Brighid-Binne-Bheul- 
 Ihuchd^nan-trusganan-uaine, Song-sweet (lit. melodious mouth'd) 
 Brighid of the Tribe of the Green Mantles. She is also called 
 Brighid of the Harp, Brighid of the Sorrowful, Brighid of 
 Prophecy, Brighid of Pure Love, St. Bride of the Isles, Bride of 
 Joy, and other names. Aona is an occasional and ancient form 
 of Di-Aoin, Friday ; and Luan, of Diluain, Monday. 
 
 Tir-na-h'Oige (commonly anglicised as Tirnanogue) is the Land 
 of (Eternal) Youth ; Tir-fo-thuinn is the Country of the Waves ; 
 and Tir-na-h'oise is the Country of Ancient Years. The fairy 
 names Siubhal-bheann, Cu-gorm, and Siread-thall respectively 
 mean Mountain-traveller, Grey Hound, and Seek-Beyond. 
 
 197 
 
For the stooping to drink, my glancing eyes lit on a 
 Beauty of tall woman standing among a mist of wild- 
 an Idea, hyacinths under three great sycamores. I 
 stood, looking, as a fawn looks, wide-eyed, 
 unafraid. She did not speak, but she smiled, 
 and because of the love and beauty in her 
 eyes I ran to her. She stooped and lifted 
 blueness out of the flowers as one might lift 
 foam out of a pool, and I thought she threw 
 it over me. When I was found, lying among 
 the hyacinths, dazed, and, as was thought, ill, 
 I asked eagerly after the lady in white and 
 with hair * all shiny-gold like buttercups/ but 
 when I found I was laughed at, or at last, 
 when I passionately persisted, was told I was 
 sun-dazed and had been dreaming, I said no 
 more. But I did not forget. And for many 
 days, for weeks indeed, I stole away to seek 
 or be found by my white love, though she had 
 gone away or did not come again. It was 
 years afterward that I heard a story of a 
 woman of the divine folk, who was called the 
 Lady of the Sea, and was a daughter of Lir, 
 and went lamenting upon the earth because 
 she had lost her brother Manan the Beautiful, 
 but came upon him at last among the hills of 
 Iceland and wooed him with songs and flowers 
 and brought him back again, so that all the 
 world of men rejoiced, and ships sailed the 
 
 198 
 
seas in safety and nets were filled with the The 
 fruit of the wave. And it was years after that Gaelic 
 before I knew the deeper wisdom, and wrote Heart> 
 of the Shepherdess the words that I now say 
 again * I believe that we are close upon a 
 great and deep spiritual change ; I believe a 
 new redemption is even now conceived of the 
 Divine Spirit in the human heart, that is itself 
 as a woman, broken in dreams and yet sus- 
 tained in faith, patient, long-suffering, looking 
 towards home. I believe that though the 
 Reign of Peace may be yet a long way off, it 
 is drawing near ; and that Who shall save us 
 anew shall come divinely as a Woman but 
 whether through mortal birth, or as an im- 
 mortal breathing upon our souls, none can yet 
 know. Sometimes I dream of the old pro- 
 phecy that Christ shall come again upon lona ; 
 and of that later prophecy which foretells, now 
 as the Bride of Christ, now as the Daughter 
 of God, now as the Divine Spirit embodied 
 through mortal birth the coming of a new 
 Presence and Power; and dream that this 
 may be upon lona, so that the little Gaelic 
 island may become as the little Syrian Beth- 
 lehem. But more wise it is to dream, not of 
 hallowed ground, but of the hallowed gardens 
 of the soul, wherein She shall appear white 
 and radiant. Or that, upon the hills, where 
 
 199 
 
For the we are wandered, the Shepherdess shall call 
 Beauty of us home.' 
 an Idea. 
 
 Yes, I have thought often of Mary Mac- 
 arthur, that solitary old woman, poor and 
 desolate, once so beautiful: yet loved by 
 Brighid, the genius of our people. Was it 
 not our sorrowful Gaelic world I saw, when 
 I came upon the poor old woman that pass- 
 ing world of songs and beauty, of poets' dreams 
 and of broken hearts, that even now in forlorn 
 old age is loved again by Brighid the White 
 Brighid the White, who even yet may use 
 the fading voice to lead the wild trumpets of 
 revelation ? 
 
 We have in Ross and the Outer Isles a 
 singular legend, which has a beauty within 
 and without. A young crofter was unhappy 
 in love and not fortunate in the hard way of 
 the hill-life. When bad seasons come on the 
 back of the black wind, the croft-smoke turns 
 from blue to brown, as the saying is : and bad 
 seasons in succession had come to the Strath, 
 and every one of the scattered clansfolk there 
 had suffered, but none so much as Fergus 
 
 200 
 
Dhu, who had lost sheep, and crops, and the The 
 youth out of his heart. Gaelic 
 
 One day he went idly across the boggy Heart * 
 moor under Cnoc Glas, mooning among the 
 loneroid and black heather where the white 
 tufts of canna were like blown foam of the 
 sea. A single tree grew on that waste, a 
 thorn that on a forgotten Beltane had been 
 withered into a grey Woman, the Fairy Thorn 
 or The Singing Tree or Tree of Bad Music. 
 At many a winter ceilidh by the peat-glow 
 tales were passed of what had been seen or 
 heard there : but they were all at one in this, 
 that only the happy and fortunate were in 
 peril there, that only the unhappy and unfor- 
 tunate might go that way, and, indifferent, 
 see the tall swift woman in grey, or hear the 
 thin music. 
 
 Likely that was why Fergus Fergus Dhu 
 as he was called, because of his black hair, 
 and black eyes, and the dark hours into which 
 he so often fell wandered that day along 
 the sodden bracken - covered sheep - ways. 
 When he came to the Thorn he saw no grey 
 woman, perhaps because there was no room in 
 his dreaming mind for any but one woman 
 who now would never warm to him but be a 
 kindly stranger always ; and heard no thin air, 
 gay or wild, perhaps because the sad lift and 
 
 201 
 
For the fall in his heart was a daylong sound that 
 Beauty of dulled his ears. But while he was staring 
 an Idea, -jjy j nto t ^ e w [thered thorn he saw a short 
 stem break into little green leaves. He could 
 not believe what his eyes showed him, but 
 when he saw also pink and white blossoms run 
 in and out among the leaves and break into 
 a fall of snow, and felt the sudden sweetness 
 in the air about him, he believed. He went 
 closer, and his wonder grew when he saw that 
 the stem had seven holes in it. He put his 
 hand on the stem, and it came away. There 
 was a hole at each end, and the thorn-reed 
 was like any feadan. So he put it to his 
 mouth, and ran his familiar fingers up and 
 down the holes, for Fergus Dhu was the cun- 
 ningest player in the Strath. He played till 
 the whole Thorn went into a wave of green. 
 He played till a snow of blossom came all 
 over the green of the sea. Although it was 
 November, and wet, and the hill- wind moaned 
 searching the corries, by the thorn it was like 
 a May noon. Fergus looked at the sky, and 
 saw that it was blue : at the long moor, and 
 saw that it was covered with April yellow and 
 with a shimmer of the wings of little birds. 
 He looked at the grey hills to the east, and 
 they were rose-red and a star was above them : 
 he looked at the grey hills to the west, and 
 
 202 
 
they were blue as peat-smoke and a rainbow The 
 leaned against them. Then his heart filled Gaelic 
 with joy, and he said to himself, ' I have found Heart - 
 my desire.' So he played his joy. As he 
 played, the rainbow leaned away from the 
 grey hills of the west, and took their sadness, 
 and was no more : the star sank behind the 
 grey mountains of the east : the long moor 
 faded into the old silence : the white foam and 
 the green wave ebbed from the thorn. 
 
 Fergus looked at the thorn-pipe, and it was 
 only a black cloud- wet feadan with seven 
 mossy holes in it. 
 
 He 'went away' in that hour. No one 
 saw him that night, or the next day, or the 
 next : and months and years passed, and no 
 one saw him, and his body was never seen, 
 though his bonnet was found near the withered 
 thorn. 
 
 In the seventh year after that a strange 
 thing happened. A new life quickened the 
 thorn. A thousand small green buds shook 
 out little fluttering green leaves, and, from 
 these, white moths of blossom continually 
 rose. Linnets sang on the branches. 
 
 One day Fergus Dhu came strolling that 
 way. He had no memory of the years that 
 had gone, or with whom he had been, and the 
 sweet fatal accent was out of his ears. But 
 
 203 
 
For the when he saw the thorn he remembered his 
 Beauty of feadan, and took it from his coat-fold, and 
 an Idea. pi a y e d because of his gladness. The tears 
 fell from his eyes when he saw the grey rain 
 come down and blot out the new life from 
 the thorn, so that it was old and withered 
 again : and at the wet hill-wind calling again 
 its old mournful cry, wheeling like a tired 
 hawk above the far lamentation of the sheep. 
 f Why is this ? ' he said. ' When I saw this 
 lonely place in its sorrow I played it into joy. 
 And now when I come upon it in its beauty, 
 I have played it back into the old sorrow. 
 Grief to my heart, that it is so.' 
 
 One man of the Strath saw Fergus Dhu 
 that day, and he spoke of Fergus as a thin 
 worn leaf that one sees through when it hangs 
 in the wind. Certainly no other saw him, nor 
 has seen him since. 
 
 This tale of Fergus, who was fey, and went 
 down the west with strangers, is it not also 
 a symbol, even as Mary Macarthur, old and 
 poor but treasured and loved and cared for by 
 the Genius of our race ... is it not also a 
 symbol of the Gaelic heart, of the Gaelic 
 muse let me say? For the Gaelic muse 
 
 204 
 
seems to me the beautiful and sad and way- The 
 wardly joyous spirit of whom poor Fergus Gaelic 
 was but the troubled image. Does she, too, Heart, 
 not go to and fro in a land where rainbows 
 bloom and fade above desolate places and 
 where a star hangs above the holy hills of the 
 east, seeking her desire : going in sorrow, but, 
 suddenly beholding the world radiant, break- 
 ing into songs of joy and laughter : coming 
 again, after an evil time, and finding the grey 
 thorn of the world full of the green leaf, 
 blossom, and undying youth, and, so finding, 
 turning suddenly to tears, and to the old 
 sorrow, and to the longing whose thirst is not 
 to be quenched, to the cry of the curlew for 
 the waste, of the heart going a long way from 
 shadow to shadow ? 
 
 One must with this lanthorn of the spirit 
 look into the dark troubled water of the 
 Gaelic heart, too, I think, if one would under- 
 stand. How else can one understand the 
 joy that is so near to sorrow, the sorrow that 
 like a wave of the sea can break in a moment 
 into light and beauty ? I have heard often in 
 effect, ' This is no deep heart that in one hour 
 weeps, and in the next laughs.' But I know 
 a deeper heart that in one hour weeps and in 
 the next laughs, so deep that light dies away 
 within it, and silence and the beginning and 
 
 205 
 
For the the end are one : the heart of the sea. And 
 Beauty of there is another heart that is deep, and weeps 
 an Idea. one nour an( j i n ^he next laughs : the heart 
 of Night . . . where Oblivion smiles, and 
 it is day ; sighs, and the darkness is come. 
 And there is another heart that is deep, and 
 weeps in one hour and in the next laughs : the 
 soul of man: where tears and laughter are 
 the fans that blow the rose- white flame of life. 
 And I am well content that the Gaelic heart, 
 that in one hour weeps and in the next laughs, 
 though it be so sad and worn among smiling 
 nations, is in accord with the great spirits of 
 the world and with immortal things. 
 
 206 
 

 Anima Celtica 
 
 ' . . . le reve de la vie vue en 
 beaute . . .' RENAN. 
 
 ( To see things in their beauty 
 is to see them in their truth. 1 
 MATTHEW ARNOLD. 
 
THE GAEL AND HIS HERITAGE 
 
 SEUMAS : A MEMORY 
 
 AILEEN : A MEMORY 
 
 THE FOUR WINDS OF EIRINN 
 
 ' THE SHADOWY WATERS ' 
 
 A TRIAD 
 
 THE ANCIENT BEAUTY 
 
THE GAEL AND HIS HERITAGE 1 
 
 ' He who moves about happy in 
 dreams, he is the Self, this is the 
 immortal, the fearless.' Khanda 
 x. of the 8th Prapdthka of the 
 Ehandogya- Upanishads. 
 
 THE last tragedy for broken nations is not 
 the loss of power and distinction, nor even 
 the loss of that independence which is so vital 
 to the commonweal. It is not, perhaps, even 
 the loss of country, though there is no harder 
 thing than to see the smoke of the stranger, 
 or to hear upon the wind the forlorn business 
 of the going of those who are dispossessed 
 and the coming of those new in possession. 
 The last tragedy, and the saddest, is when the 
 treasured language dies slowly out, when 
 winter falls upon the legendary remembrance 
 of a people. Sometimes a bitter destiny 
 
 1 Reprinted from The Nineteenth Century, Nov. 1900, where it 
 appeared as an article upon ' Carmina Gadelica ; Hymns and 
 incantations, etc. In 2 vols. large 4to. Orally collected in the 
 Highlands and islands of Scotland, and translated into English 
 by Alexander Carmichael.' 
 
 o 209 
 
The Gael descends suddenly upon a nation, as when 
 and his Russia all but strangles Finland, permitting 
 Heritage, ^at broken people, when it gasps for life, to 
 live, but on condition that it relinquishes 
 freedom, language, tradition, hope, pride, and 
 honour. The wrong is not the blind wrong 
 of a barbaric people too savage to know the 
 sacredness of pledge and solemn oath, but is 
 the open wrong of a cynical Government, 
 scorning the most sacred pledge and the most 
 solemn oath. Then again the destiny that 
 comes upon a crushed nation may be only 
 retributive and regenerative, as with Spain. 
 Such nations are bent, not broken : they have 
 no tragic sunset. They have not lost the 
 irrecoverable, and they have hope. Another 
 destiny there is, that which awaits a people 
 which has never been a sovereign power, but 
 has had national greatness ; which has never 
 striven to extend its dominion, but has seen 
 its own frontiers, liberties, possibilities, and at 
 last even its language and cherished national 
 inheritance of legend and gathered incalculable 
 beauty shrink from age to age, from genera- 
 tion to generation, from decade to decade, 
 from year to year. Such a people is the 
 Gaelic people. When I speak of the Gaelic 
 people of Ireland and Scotland, I speak, alas I 
 only of the small Gaelic remnant in the 
 
 2IO 
 
Scottish Highlands and in the Isles, and of The Gael 
 the remnant in Ireland. This people is unable and his 
 or unwilling to accept the bitter solace o f Herita ge. 
 absorption in the language, the written 
 thought, the active, omnipresent, and varie- 
 gated energy of the dominant race. It has 
 to keep silence more and more, and soon it 
 too will be silent. 
 
 It is a strange thing : that a nation can hold 
 within itself an ancient race, standing for the 
 lost, beautiful, mysterious ancient world, can 
 see it fading through its dim twilight, without 
 heed to preserve that which might yet be pre- 
 served, without interest even in that which 
 once gone cannot come again. The old Gaelic 
 race is in its twilight indeed ; but now, alas ! 
 it is the hastening twilight after the feast of 
 Samhin, when winter is come at last, out of 
 the hills, down the glens, on the four winds 
 of the world. 
 
 There are some, however, who do care. 
 There are some whose hearts ache to see the 
 last pathetic stand of a retreating people, and 
 who would gladly do what yet may be done 
 to preserve awhile the beautiful old-world 
 language and the still more beautiful and 
 significant thought and legend and subtle 
 genius enshrined in that language; who are 
 truly loth to let die and become legendary 
 
 211 
 
The Gael and literary that which had once so glorious a 
 
 and his noon, and has now a sunset beauty, is even 
 
 Heritage. y et a ij v j n g aspect, is still the coloured thought 
 
 of life and not of the curious imagination 
 
 only. 
 
 Those who think thus and desire thus must 
 ever be grateful to Mr. Alexander Carmichael, 
 who, after so many years of preparation 
 through a long life of loving and sympathetic 
 heed for the beautiful things of the past as 
 seen and heard in the Hebrides, but now, 
 alas ! hardly to be seen and rarely to be heard, 
 has given us the invaluable record of his life- 
 work. It is not too much to say that Mr. 
 Carmichael is the last great chronicler of the 
 Gael. Even before the late John Campbell 
 of Islay died, having won a European repu- 
 tation for his collection and translation of 
 Gaelic folklore, he feared that the day was 
 over when much more was to be gleaned. 
 He knew that when Mr. Carmichael left the 
 Hebrides, and went to Edinburgh to prepare 
 the life-work of forty years, he would have no 
 like successor. This not because there are no 
 willing workers now (one of the foremost of 
 these, John Gregorson Campbell of the island 
 of Tiree, is our latest loss) ; but because it is 
 too late. Even in the Gaelic-speaking Irish 
 west, from Donegal to Clare, the native col- 
 
 212 
 
lector finds more and more difficulty ; for the The Gael 
 old are proud, and the middle-aged have for- an( * bis 
 gotten or are silent, and the young do not ntage * 
 know and do not care. Dr. Douglas Hyde, 
 the late William Larminie, and others have 
 done what they could, but the gleaners now 
 have a small aftermath for their gain, because 
 of the narrowing pastures of a once vast and 
 fruitful national heritage. Most of the folk- 
 lore and folk-tales now got in Gaelic Scotland 
 and Ireland are at third-hand, got by the 
 person who tells them from some other, who 
 had them from this man or that woman, but 
 in English, and too often with a perplexing 
 dual light on them as of noon and moonlight, 
 and even at the best without the determining 
 savour and unalloyed colour and unique accent 
 of the Gaelic original. 
 
 By a singular irony the students of Gaelic 
 literature and Gaelic language are increasing : 
 of ancient Gaelic, indeed, there are many 
 scholars to whom we owe much and shall 
 owe more Whitley Stokes and Kuno Meyer 
 and Dr. George Henderson among them, in 
 Ireland Dr. Douglas Hyde, Mr. T. W. Rolles- 
 ton, and others. Soon there will be only a 
 few old peasants and a few learned men 
 (mostly Germans) who will be able to speak 
 in the old language. 
 
 213 
 
The Gael Now that Mr. Carmichael has given us so 
 and his much of his life-work (let us trust not all, and 
 Heritage. t ^ at ^ e j las vet mucn accumulated lore to 
 
 give us from remembrance and translation), 
 and that advanced years will prevent him from 
 again relinquishing time and means in his en- 
 thusiastic quest, there are few who can take 
 up his work. What is sadder is that there are 
 fewer and fewer among the islanders and the 
 Highlanders of the remoter districts of the 
 mainland who can or will repeat the desired 
 old wisdom, beauty, and strangeness of ancient 
 faiths and customs. The Gaelic -speaking 
 islesman or Highlander has an all but uncon- 
 querable reticence now, and will seldom speak 
 of the hidden things that were once common 
 and beautiful with the commonness and beauty 
 of sunlight and wind. Many causes have led 
 to this. When a people is forced by circum- 
 stances to speak two tongues the native speech 
 naturally remains that of the inward life, the 
 inward remembrance, the spirit. The English- 
 speaking Gael is apt to be silent and morose 
 in English if he does not know it well or is 
 not at ease in its use, and naturally is not 
 found communicative by those who would hear 
 him speak of the things they wish to hear. 
 He is proud and sensitive too, and does not 
 appreciate the superior smile and the ill-bred 
 
 214 
 
laugh with which his interrogator so fre- The Gael 
 quently punctuates his curiosity. When and his 
 things sacred to his forefathers, and to him 
 too for that very association as for others, are 
 broached as when one would ask about the 
 potato blight or the herring failure it is 
 surely only natural that he should be irre- 
 sponsive, or, if he answer, be evasive, or take 
 refuge in a seeming boorish dulness. But how 
 much greater a gulf exists between these 
 Scottish or English foreigners and those Gaels 
 who practically have no language but their 
 own, so little English have they, and in that 
 isolation are so remote from the confusedly 
 coloured verbiage of modern speech, and our 
 modern ways of thought, and, above all, our 
 modern ways of life. It is a gulf that few can 
 realise, except those few who perforce live 
 much with both peoples, and speak readily 
 the speech of both, and understand what is in 
 each that here repels and there attracts the 
 other. I have known many instances of 
 Gaelic crofters and fishermen who have not 
 only refused to be drawn into confidence but 
 have wilfully misled their interrogators. I 
 remember on one occasion crossing the Sound 
 of Eriskay, between the island of that name 
 and South Uist : when two men were in the 
 ferry, and with them was a man whom they 
 
 215 
 
The Gael had hired to go with them on their fishing 
 and his excursion in Uist and Benbecula. They asked 
 Heritage. man y questions of the boatmen, and learned 
 little, the men for one thing having their work 
 to see to, and their daily needs to bear in 
 mind, and not caring for the idle curiosity of 
 strangers. The latter seemed aggrieved, and 
 spoke heedlessly concerning the stupidity of 
 ' these Highlanders,' and how ignorant they 
 were. A week or two later I met the man 
 who had gone with them to fish. ' Well, P61 
 M'Phail,' I said, 'and how did you get on 
 with your English friends ? Did you tell them 
 what they wanted to know about what we do, 
 and what we think on this and that ? ' ' At 
 first I told them nothing,' he said, ' and then 
 when they bothered me every hour I told 
 them a little that was nothing at all, and they 
 were pleased ; and at last when they wanted 
 more, and spoke of things I did not wish to 
 speak about, I told them a fathom o' nonsense, 
 and the older man he put a net into my 
 words and took out what he fancied, and told 
 his friend to write them down as he said them 
 over. I laughed at that for sure, for it was 
 all foam and forgetfulness. And on the last 
 night, when he brought out a book with 
 nothing but white paper in it, and said he 
 wanted to take down some things from me, 
 
 216 
 
and for me to put my name and place at the The Gael 
 end of it, I said then I could not, for being and his 
 only a Barra man I had no more English, Herita e - 
 having used all I knew in telling the fine tales 
 I had told. And at that he seemed surprised, 
 and I don't know yet if he has thought it out, 
 and sees that a man can tell tales only with 
 the words he has, and that when these are 
 used up he can tell no more tales.' 
 
 I recall this little anecdote as significant. One 
 other, equally significant, will suffice as com- 
 mentary on what I have said. I was staying 
 with friends who had taken a farmer's house 
 in Glen Usinish, under the shoulder of mighty 
 Hecla, in South Uist, and heard from a crofter 
 of a foreign gentleman who had the Gaelic like 
 the sruthmara (the flowing tide), though it 
 was not the Gaelic of the isles; and this 
 gentleman was asking, asking everywhere, and 
 writing down whenever he could get what he 
 wanted. ' No,' added the crofter, ' it was not 
 old tales or old songs he wanted, like good 
 Father Allan of Erisgey, but if we did this 
 or if we did that, and the why of it, and who 
 did it now, and did we believe in it, and could 
 we give names ? So we just all had a heavy 
 silence like mist on us. For we knew that 
 though he had the Gaelic tongue he had not 
 the Gaelic heart. For sure it was not for love 
 
 217 
 
 
The Gael and kinship, but just to find out and to speak 
 and his scornfully to others about our ways, that he 
 Heritage. as k edi So ne got littlej and wnat litt i e ne got 
 
 would not be a good catch for any one but an 
 dmitan (a fool).' The next day one of our 
 company was fishing on Loch Druidibeg, and 
 there met the folklore hunter, who was fishing 
 there also, and learned from him that he had 
 got much unexpected information, though con- 
 fusedly told, and that he found the people 
 strange and quite unlike what he had read 
 about them, with nothing of that peculiar 
 imagination and Celtic beauty of speech and 
 thought of which he had heard so much and 
 found in books both old and new, and that, 
 far from being a spiritual and poetic race, he 
 found the highlander and still more the islander 
 dull and prosaic, and with interests wholly 
 commonplace and selfish. In the following 
 winter I heard from a friend that this gentle- 
 man had lectured on ' The Gael as he is to-day ' 
 (I give, not the title, but the subject of his 
 lecture), and though I had merely the vaguest 
 report of it, I can well believe, as my correspon- 
 dent said, that the lecturer betrayed not only a 
 radical ignorance of the actual manners, cus- 
 toms, and thought, the outward and inward 
 life of the Gael of to-day, but constantly mis- 
 apprehended and misinterpreted what little he 
 
 218 
 
had been able to gather. We have an old The Gael 
 saying that it takes three years to get into a and f" s 
 man's mind, and twice three years to get to Henta S e - 
 what is secret in a man's mind, and thrice three 
 years to get a man to speak of the secret 
 things that are in his mind. 
 
 This, then, is one of the obvious reasons 
 why it is so difficult for those of foreign speech 
 and manners and ways of thought and life to 
 reach into the true life of the Gael, by whom, 
 of course, I mean not the Anglicised or Scoti- 
 cised persons of Highland parentage who live 
 in Glasgow or in Edinburgh, for example, but 
 the remoter Gael who speaks his ancient 
 tongue, and to a great extent lives the life 
 lived by his ancestors for many generations. 
 
 Of the relatively small number capable of 
 this sympathetic understanding and this 
 adequate interpretation only for a very few 
 it is possible to do anything even approxi- 
 mating the great service done by Mr. Alexander 
 Carmichael. Dr. George Henderson, for in- 
 stance, a Gaelic-speaking Gael and one of the 
 most learned Celtic students living, is fitted 
 for the congenial work ; but his labours in 
 Oxford and elsewhere render a task of the 
 kind practically impossible. Even the greatest 
 enthusiast, and a clansman, cannot get into 
 the life of the people in the sense of intimate 
 
 219 
 
The Gael comradeship in a few holiday weeks ; and, as all 
 and his o f us who are of the north know, there are inter- 
 Heritage. c j an or i oca i suspicions and jealousies which, 
 superficial and removable as they commonly 
 are, yet perforce have to be considered. Indeed, 
 I know of only one man who can do for us 
 anything equivalent to the great task which 
 Mr. Alexander Carmichael has now triumph- 
 antly brought to the long-desired end. I 
 allude to Father Allan Macdonald, of Erisgey 
 in South Uist, a priest who is not only beloved 
 of his people, and truly a father to them, but 
 is an enthusiast in Gaelic lore and literature, 
 who in his many years' ministration has col- 
 lected what, if ever translated, will be almost 
 as invaluable a treasure-trove as these ' Ortha 
 nan Gaidheal,' the Carmina Gadelica of Mr. 
 Carmichael. 
 
 Incidentally may I be excused the person- 
 ality and say with what eagerness those of us 
 who love and cherish the beautiful oral 
 literature and legendary lore and folk-songs 
 of the Gael wish that there were more priests 
 and ministers like Father Allan Macdonald, 
 and the late Gregorson Campbell of Tiree? 
 I do not think any one who has not lived 
 intimately in the Highlands can realise the 
 extent to which the blight of Calvinism has 
 fallen upon the people, clouding the spirit, 
 
 220 
 
stultifying the mind, taking away all joyous- The Gael 
 ness and light-hearted gaiety, laying a ban and his 
 upon music even, upon songs, making laughter Heritage, 
 as rare as a clansman landlord, causing a sad 
 gloom as common as a ruined croft. And 
 even where matters are no longer so bitter as 
 they were a generation ago, even where to-day 
 a certain half-hearted turning towards a truer 
 conception of human life is evident, it is too 
 late too late for the recovery of that which 
 is gone away upon the wind. 
 
 But as this is a matter on which (when I 
 have written to a like effect) I have been held 
 unjustifiably prejudiced either from the Gaelic 
 or sectarian standpoint or both, I will give 
 without comment an episode incidentally cited 
 by Mr. Carmichael in his Introduction, and 
 give it with the more propriety as it will 
 reveal to many readers the splendid native 
 material which has been so piteously perverted. 
 
 During my quest I went into a house near Ness. 
 The house was clean and comfortable, if plain and 
 unpretending, most things in it being home-made. 
 There were three girls in the house, young, comely, 
 and shy, and four women, middle-aged, handsome, and 
 picturesque in their homespun gowns and high-crowned 
 mutches. Three of the women had been to the moor- 
 land pastures with their cattle, and had turned in 
 here to rest on their way home. 
 
 221 
 
The Gael ' Hail to the house and the household,' said I, 
 and his greeting the inmates in the salutation of our fathers. 
 Heritage. Hail to you, kindly stranger,"* replied the housewife. 
 ' Come forward and take this seat. If it be not ill- 
 mannered may we ask whence you have come this 
 day ? You are tired and travel-stained, and probably 
 hungry ? ' ' I have come from Cress,' I said, * round 
 by Tolasta to the south and Tolasta to the north, 
 taking a look at the ruins of the Church of St. Aula 
 at Gress, and at the ruins of the fort of Dunothail, 
 and then across the moorland. 1 ' May the Possessor 
 keep you in His own keeping, good man. You left 
 early and have travelled far, and must be hungry.' 
 
 With this the woman raised her eyes towards her 
 daughters, standing demurely silent and motionless 
 as Greek statues in the background. In a moment 
 the three fair girls became active and animated. One 
 ran to the stack and brought in an armful of hard, 
 black peats ; another ran to the well and brought in 
 a pail of clear spring water, while a third quickly 
 spread a cloth, white as snow, upon the table in the 
 inner room. The three neighbours rose to leave, and 
 I rose to do the same. * Where are you going, good 
 man ? ' asked the housewife in injured surprise, moving 
 between me and the door. ' You must not go till 
 you eat a bit and drink a sip. That indeed would 
 be a reproach to us that we would not soon get over. 
 These slips of lassies and I would not hear the end 
 of it from the men at the sea, were we to allow a 
 wayfarer to go from our door hungry, thirsty, and 
 weary. No ! no ! you must not go till you eat a bite. 
 Food will be ready presently, and in the meantime 
 you will bathe your feet and dry your stockings, which 
 
 222 
 
are wet after coming through the marshes of the The Gael 
 moorland/ and his 
 
 Then the woman went down upon her knees, and Heritage, 
 washed and dried the feet of the stranger as gently 
 and tenderly as a mother would those of her child. 
 * We have no stockings to suit the kilt, 1 said the 
 woman, in a tone of evident regret, * but here 's a pair 
 of stockings of the houseman's which he has never had 
 on, and perhaps you would put them on till your own 
 are dry. 1 
 
 One of the girls had already washed out my stock- 
 ings, and they were presently drying before the bright 
 fire on the middle of the floor. I deprecated all this 
 trouble, but to no purpose. In an incredibly short 
 time I was asked to go ' ben ' and break bread. 
 
 Through the pressure of the housewife and of 
 myself the other three women had resumed their seats, 
 uneasily, it is true ; but immediately before food was 
 announced the three women rose together and quietly 
 walked away, no urging detaining them. 
 
 The table was laden with wholesome food sufficient 
 for several persons. There were fried herrings and 
 boiled turbot fresh from the sea, and eggs fresh from 
 the yard. There were fresh butter and salt butter, 
 wheaten scones, barley bannocks, and oat cakes, with 
 excellent tea and cream. The woman apologised that 
 she had no 'aran coinnich' (moss bread that is, 
 loaf bread) and no biscuits, they being simple crofter 
 people far away from the big town [Stornoway]. 
 
 ' This,' said I, taking my seat, ' looks like the table 
 for a reiteach ' (betrothal) rather than for one man. 
 Have you betrothals in Lews ? ' I asked, turning my 
 eyes towards the other room where we had left the 
 
 223 
 
The Gael three comely maidens. Oh, indeed, yes, the Lews 
 and his people are very good at marrying. Foolish young 
 Heritage, creatures, they often marry before they know their 
 responsibilities or realise their difficulties,' 1 and her 
 eyes followed mine in the direction of her own young 
 daughters. ' I suppose there is much fun and rejoic- 
 ing at your marriages music, dancing, singing, and 
 merry-makings of many kinds ? ' 6 Oh, indeed, no ; 
 our weddings are now quiet and becoming, not the 
 foolish things they were in my young days. In my 
 memory weddings were great events, with singing and 
 piping, dancing and amusements all night through, 
 and generally for two or three nights in succession. 
 Indeed, the feast of the " bord breid " (kertch table) 
 was almost as great as the feast of the marriage table, 
 all the young men and maidens struggling to get it. 
 On the morning after the marriage the mother of the 
 bride, and, failing her, the mother of the bridegroom, 
 placed the "breid tri chearnach" (three-cornered kertch) 
 on the head of the bride before she rose from her 
 bed. And the mother did this ("an ainm na Tri Bean- 
 naichte" (in the name of the Sacred Three), under 
 whose guidance the young wife was to walk. Then the 
 bride arose and the maidens dressed her, and the bards 
 sang songs to her, and recited "rannagail mhora" 
 (great rigmaroles), and there was much rejoicing and 
 merry-making all day long and all night through. 
 " Gu dearbh mar a b'e fleagh na bord breid a b'fhearr, 
 cha 'ne hearr bu mheasa" (Indeed, if the feast of the 
 kertch table was not better it was not a whit 
 worse). 
 
 c There were many sad things done then, for those 
 were the days of foolish doings and foolish people. 
 
 224 
 
Perhaps, on the day of the Lord, when they came out The Gael 
 of church indeed, if they went into church the and his 
 young men would go to throw the stone, or to toss Heritage, 
 the caber, or to play shinty, or to run races, or to 
 race horses on the strand, the young maidens looking 
 on the while, ay, and the old men and women.' ' And 
 have you no music, no singing, no dancing now at 
 your marriages ? ' ' May the Possessor keep you ! I 
 see that you are a stranger to Lews, or you would 
 not ask such a question, 1 the woman exclaimed, with 
 grief and surprise in her tone. ' It is long since we 
 abandoned those foolish ways in Ness, and, indeed, 
 throughout Lews. In my young days there was hardly 
 a house in Ness in which there was not one or two or 
 three who could play the pipe or the fiddle or the 
 trump. And I have heard it said there were men, 
 and women too, who could play things they called 
 harps, and lyres, and bellow-pipes, but I do not know 
 what those things were.' ' And why were those dis- 
 continued ? ' ' A blessed change came over the place 
 and the people,' the woman replied in earnestness, 
 6 and the good men and the good ministers who arose 
 did away with the songs and the stories, the dancing 
 and the music, the sports and the games, that were 
 perverting the minds and ruining the souls of the 
 people, leading them to folly and stumbling.' ' But 
 how did the people themselves come to discard their 
 sports and pastimes ? ' ' Oh, the good ministers and 
 the good elders preached against them, and went 
 among the people, and besought them to forsake their 
 follies and return to wisdom. They made the people 
 break their pipes and fiddles. If there were foolish 
 men here and there who demurred the good minister 
 P 225 
 
The Gael and the good elders themselves broke and burnt their 
 
 and his instruments, saying : 
 
 Heritage. 
 
 " Is fearr an teine beag a gharas la beag na sithe 
 Na'n teine mor a loisgeas la mor na feirge " 
 
 (Better is the small fire that warms on the little day of peace 
 Than the big fire that burns on the great day of wrath). 
 
 The people have forsaken their follies and their Sab- 
 bath-breaking, and there is no pipe, no fiddle here 
 now,' said the woman, in evident satisfaction. ' And 
 what have you now instead of the racing, the stone- 
 throwing, and the caber-tossing, the song, the pipe, 
 and the dance ? ' ' Oh, we have now the blessed Bible 
 preached and explained to us faithfully and earnestly, 
 if we sinful people would only walk in the right path 
 and use our opportunities. 11 
 
 ' But what have you at your weddings ? How do 
 you pass the time ? ' 
 
 ' Oh, the carles are on one side of the house, talking 
 of their crops and their nowt, and mayhap of the 
 days when they were young and when things were 
 different ; and the young men are on the other side 
 of the house, talking about boats, and sailing, and 
 militia, and naval reserve, perhaps of their own 
 strength, and of many foolish matters besides/ 
 
 ' And the girls, what are they doing ? ' ' Oh, they, 
 silly things, are in the " culaist " (back-house), perhaps 
 trying to croon over some foolish song under their 
 breath, perhaps trying to amble through some awkward 
 steps of dancing on the points of their toes ; or, 
 shame to tell, perhaps speaking of what dress this or 
 that gril had on at this or that marriage, or, worse 
 still, what hat this girl or that had on on the Day of the 
 
 226 
 
Lord, perhaps even on the day of the Holy Communion, The Gael 
 showing that their minds were on the vain things of and his 
 the world instead of on the wise things of salvation.' Heritage. 
 
 6 But why are the girls in the " culaist " ? What 
 do they fear ? ' ' May the Good Being keep you, good 
 man. They are in the "culaist" for concealment, and 
 the fear of their life and of their death upon them 
 that they may be heard or seen should the good elder 
 happen to be passing the way/ 'And should he, 
 what then?' 'Oh, the elder will tell the minister, 
 and the good minister will scold them from the pulpit, 
 mentioning the girls by name. But the girls have a 
 blanket on the door and another blanket on the window 
 to deafen the sounds and to obscure the light.' 
 
 ' Do the young maidens allow the young men to 
 join them in the culaist " ? ' Indeed, truth to tell, 
 the maidens would be glad enough to admit the young 
 men were it not the fear of exposure. But the young 
 men are so loud of voice and heavy of foot, and make 
 so much noise, that they would betray the retreat of 
 the girls, who would get rebuked, while the young men 
 would escape. The girls would then be ashamed and 
 cast down, and would not lift a head for a year and a 
 day after their well-deserved scolding. They suffer 
 most, for, sad to say, the young men are becoming less 
 afraid of being admonished than they used to be.' 
 
 And do the people have spirits at their marriages?' 
 ' Oh yes ; the minister is not so hard upon them at 
 all. He does not interfere with them in that way 
 unless they take too much and talk loudly and quarrel. 
 Then he is grieved and angry, and scolds them severely. 
 Occasionally, indeed, the carles have a nice " frogan " 
 (liveliness) upon them, and are very happy together. 
 
 227 
 
The Gael But, oh, they never quarrel nor fight, nor get angry 
 and his with one another. They are always nice to one 
 Heritage, another and civil to all around them.' 
 
 ' Perhaps were the minister to allow the people less 
 drink and more music and dancing and merry-making 
 they would enjoy it as much. I am sure the young 
 girls would sing better, and dance better, with the 
 help of the young men. And the young men them- 
 selves would be less loud of voice and less heavy of heel 
 among the maidens. Perhaps the happiness of the old 
 people too would be none the less real nor less lasting 
 at seeing the joyousness of the young people.' 
 
 To this the woman promptly and loyally replied, 
 ' The man of the Lord is untiring in work and un- 
 failing in example for our good, and in guiding us to 
 our heavenly home, constantly reminding us of the 
 littleness of time and the greatness of eternity, and 
 he knows best, and we must do our best to follow his 
 counsel and to imitate his example.' 
 
 Mr. Carmichael speaks also of a famous 
 violin-player, who died a few years ago in the 
 island of Eigg, a good man celebrated for his 
 knowledge of old-world airs and for his old- 
 style playing. One day at divine service a 
 preacher denounced him, saying, 6 Tha thu 
 shios an sin cul na comhla,' etc. (in effect, 
 ' You that are down there behind the door, 
 miserable grey - haired man with that old 
 fiddle beside you, that you play with a cold 
 hand without and the devil's fire in your 
 
 228 
 
heart'). After that public admonition the old The Gael 
 man's family pressed him to play no more of an d his 
 his sinful airs and old songs and to burn his Herita & e - 
 fiddle. In vain this last minstrel pleaded that 
 his violin was a valuable one, as indeed it was, 
 and famed for its tone and as the handiwork 
 of a pupil of Stradivarius. At last he was 
 forced to part with it to a passing pedlar for a 
 few shillings. ' It was not the wretched thing 
 that was got for it,' he exclaimed afterwards, 
 'that grieved my heart so sorely, but the 
 parting with it ! the parting with it ! ... and 
 I too that gave the best cow in my father's 
 fold for it when I was young.' The voice of 
 the old man faltered, and tears ran down his 
 face. He was never again seen to smile. 
 
 One other instance and I have done. A 
 lady, still youthful, related to Mr. Carmichael 
 what follows : ' When we came to I slay I was 
 sent to the parish school to obtain a proper 
 grounding in arithmetic. I was charmed with 
 the schoolgirls and their Gaelic songs. But 
 the schoolmaster (a Lowlander) denounced 
 Gaelic speech and Gaelic songs. On getting 
 out of school one evening the girls resumed 
 a song they had been singing the previous 
 evening. The schoolmaster heard us, how- 
 ever, and called us back. He punished us till 
 the blood trickled from our fingers, although 
 
 229 
 
The Gael we were big girls with the dawn of womanhood 
 and his upon us. The thought of that scene thrills 
 Heritage. me with indignation.' 
 
 I think the thought of that scene, and of a 
 crowd of incidents of a kindred nature, must 
 fill with bitter resentment and indignation 
 every man and woman who has a drop of 
 Gaelic blood in his or her veins, all men and 
 women who have any ancestral pride, any love 
 for the things of beauty and honour that their 
 fathers and mothers loved and then* forebears 
 for generations loved. 
 
 For forty years Mr. Carmichael collected a 
 vast mass of oral lore, written down from the 
 recital of men and women throughout the 
 Highlands and Islands, from Arran to Caith- 
 ness, from Perth to St. Kilda, but the greater 
 part in the outer Hebrides. The present col- 
 lection, long announced as Or agus Ob (Gold 
 and Dross), and now more adequately and 
 fitly called Carmina Gadelica, is a selection 
 from this mass. Ortha nan Gaidheal, runs 
 the Gaelic title ; and the setting forth, ' Urnan 
 agus Ubagan, le solus air facia gnatha agus 
 cleachdana a chaidh air chul crussaichte bho 
 bhialachas feadh Gaidhealtachd na H-Alba : 
 agus tionndaichte bho Ghaidhlig gu Beurla, 
 le Alastair Macgillemhicheil,' which, being 
 
 230 
 
interpreted, means in effect that this collection The Gael 
 of ancient hymns and incantations, and records and his 
 of old rites and old customs, has been gathered Heritage, 
 in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland (the 
 Gaeldom of Alba . . . Gaidhealtachd na 
 H-Albd) and translated from Gaelic into 
 English by Alexander Carmichael. Of the 
 people who to this day, at the winter ceilidh 
 or in the boats on summer nights, still repeat 
 the legendary tales Mr. Carmichael gives 
 several interesting sketches. In every crofting 
 townland there are several story-tellers who 
 recite the oral lore of their predecessors. 
 These story-tellers of the Highlands, says Mr. 
 Carmichael, ' are as varied in their subjects as 
 are literary men and women elsewhere : one is 
 a historian, narrating events simply and con- 
 cisely ; another is a historian with a bias, 
 colouring his narrative according to his lean- 
 ings. One is an inventor, building fiction upon 
 fact, mingling his materials, and investing the 
 whole with the charm of novelty and the halo 
 of romance. Another is a reciter of heroic 
 poems and ballads, bringing the different 
 characters before the mind as clearly as the 
 sculptor brings the figure before the eye. One 
 gives the songs of the chief poets, with inter- 
 esting accounts of their authors, while another, 
 generally a woman, sings, to weird airs, beau- 
 
 231 
 
The Gael tiful old songs, some of them Arthurian. 
 
 and his There are various other narrators, singers, and 
 lentage. S p ea k erSj Du t; I have never heard aught that 
 should not be said nor sung.' 
 
 There is no people in the world so well bred 
 in this beautiful reticence as the Gaelic peasant. 
 He has an innate refinement which makes him 
 unique among the races of the north. It is 
 this people which is now but a remnant, and 
 soon will be a memory. 
 
 And what stores of old wisdom and legend 
 and song they had as their common heritage, 
 that a few (alas a small and ever diminishing 
 few!) still have. Here are two types in in- 
 stance, Hector Macisaac and his wife. This 
 old couple lived alone (their daughter having 
 gone into service to help her parents) in a 
 turf- walled hut thatched with reeds ; and their 
 life, like that of so many of the crofters, was 
 one of utmost penury and often of actual 
 privation. Mr. Carmichael knew both well : 
 from the woman he heard many secular 
 runes, sacred hymns, and fairy songs ; from 
 the husband numerous heroic tales, poems, 
 and ballads. Indeed so many were the stories 
 and poems which the old islander recited at 
 different times that Mr. Carmichael says they 
 would fill several volumes ; and many books, 
 he adds, could have been filled with the stories 
 
 232 
 
and poems recited by two others alone, out of The Gael 
 the many score of like-gifted islanders he knew and his 
 an old blind cottar, Hector Macleod o f Herita e - 
 Lianacuithe, in South Uist, and another old 
 cottar, Roderick Macneill of Miunghlaidh, in 
 Barra. Yet neither of them told more than 
 a small part of what he knew. None of the 
 three men knew any letters, nor any language 
 but Gaelic, nor had ever been out of his native 
 island. All expressed regret in well-chosen 
 words that they had not a better place in which 
 to receive their visitors (Mr. Carmichael and 
 Campbell of Islay), and all thanked them in 
 polite terms for coming to see them and 
 for taking an interest in their decried and 
 derided old lore. All were in all things 
 courteous. 
 
 Some idea of the way in which the con- 
 tinuity of oral lore is maintained is given by 
 Mr. Carmichael in an account such as that of 
 his friend Kenneth Morrison, an old, blind, 
 and poor man of Trithion, in Skye. He knew 
 many stories and poems, but mentioned the 
 names of many old men in the extensive but 
 now desolate parish of Minnhnis who had 
 been famous story-tellers in his boyhood 
 men who had been born in the first decade 
 of the century. Several of these, he said, 
 could recite stories and poems during many 
 
 233 
 
The Gael nights in succession, some of the tales re- 
 
 andhis quiring several nights to relate. Kenneth 
 
 Heritage. re p ea ted fragments of many of these, identical 
 
 with poems and stories or with parts of poems 
 
 and stories published by Macpherson, Smith, 
 
 the Stewarts, the MacCallums, the Campbells, 
 
 and others. 
 
 Of the treasure of old songs, hymns, and 
 folk-lore of incalculable interest brought to- 
 gether in these two beautiful volumes, the 
 greater number have been rescued from obli- 
 vion in the islands and among the Roman 
 Catholic population. Broadly speaking, the 
 northern Hebrides are Protestant, the southern 
 Catholic. At the same time, it should be 
 added, many of these treasure-trove have been 
 equally common on the mainland, and a large 
 proportion among Protestants also. Nor was 
 the collector content with a single version 
 only. From one to ten have been taken down, 
 differing more or less ; and it must often have 
 been no easy matter to select. In some in- 
 stances Mr. Carmichael has given variants. 
 Even this selection, however, could not be 
 used as it stood, and the collector adds that 
 several poems and many notes are wholly 
 withheld, w r hile a few of the poems and all 
 the notes have been abbreviated. 
 
 The collection comprises Achaine (Invo- 
 234 
 
cations, Blessings, and Prayers) ; Aimsire The Gael 
 (Hymns of the Seasons); Oibre (Songs and and his 
 Hymns of Labour) ; and, in the second Herita S e - 
 volume, Uibe (Incantations, Charms, Spells) 
 and Measgain (Miscellaneous). 
 
 Every one of these Achaine, Aimsire, and 
 Oibre has a singular beauty of thought and 
 generally of expression also, and often that 
 beauty is made more excellent for us by the 
 note that goes with the rann, achanaidh, or 
 urnuigh (rune, invocation, or blessing). Take, 
 for example, the ' Rann Romh Urnuigh,' or 
 Rune before Prayer. * Old people in the isles 
 sing this or some other short hymn before 
 prayer. Sometimes the hymn and the prayer 
 are intoned in low, tremulous, unmeasured 
 cadences, like the moving and moaning, the 
 soughing and the sighing of the ever murmur- 
 ing sea on their own wild shores. They 
 generally retire, perhaps to an outhouse, to 
 the lee of a knoll, or to the shelter of a dell, 
 that they may not be seen or heard of men. 
 I have known men and women of eighty, 
 ninety, and a hundred years of age continue 
 the practice of their lives in going from one 
 to two miles to the seashore to join their 
 voices in the voicing of the waves and their 
 praises with the praises of the ceaseless 
 sea.' 
 
 235 
 

 
 and his English : 
 Heritage. 
 
 I am bending my knee 
 In the eye of the Father who created me, 
 In the eye of the Son who purchased me, 
 In the eye of the Spirit who cleansed me, 
 
 In friendship and affection. 
 Through Thine own Anointed One, O God, 
 Bestow upon us fulness in our need, 
 
 Love towards God, 
 
 The affection of God, 
 
 The smile of God, 
 
 The wisdom of God, 
 
 The grace of God, 
 
 The fear of God, 
 
 And the will of God, 
 To do on the world of the Three 
 As angels and saints 
 Do in heaven. 
 
 Each shade and light, 
 
 Each day and night, 
 
 Each time in kindness, 
 
 Give Thou us Thy Spirit. 
 
 Can we imagine an English peasant or a 
 peasant of any other country repeating nightly, 
 alone and solemnly, this poem or one of the 
 hundreds like it ; or an aged English or any 
 other peasant going habitually from one to 
 two miles to the seashore 'to join his voice 
 with the voicings of the waves and his praises 
 with the praises of the ceaseless sea ' ? 
 
 236 
 
The very names of many of these rescued The Gael 
 songs and hymns are beautiful. Some of the and his 
 songs are very ancient, with their meanings Henta & e - 
 obscure or lost now, as Duan na Mathairn. 
 
 Thou King of the moon, 
 Thou King of the sun,, 
 Thou King of the planets, 
 Thou King of the stars, 
 Thou King of the globe, 
 Thou King of the sky, 
 Oh ! lively thy countenance, 
 Thou beauteous Beam. 
 
 Two loops of silk 
 
 Down by thy limbs, 
 
 Smooth-skinned ; 
 
 Yellow jewels, 
 
 And a handful 
 
 Out of every stock of them. 
 
 Very likely this is but a fragment, remem- 
 bered perhaps with some dim recollection of 
 when and how it should be said, and to what 
 end. * The Guiding Light of Eternity,' < The 
 Light'ner of the Stars/ < The Soul Plaint,' the 
 several Sleep Prayers and Resting Blessings 
 and Consecrations of Peace and 6 The Soul 
 Peace,' are among the most beautiful names. 
 Sometimes, in a relatively modern poem some 
 old-world wisdom will suddenly appear, as in 
 
 237 
 
The Gael this quatrain in a singular ' Ora Boisilidh,' or 
 
 and his Bathing Prayer : 
 
 Heritage. 
 
 A chuid nach fas 's a chumhanaich, 
 Gum fas 's an dubha-thrath ; 
 
 A chuid nach fas 's an oidhche dhiot, 
 Air dhruim a mheadhon la. 
 
 ( The part of thee that does not grow at dawn, may it grow at 
 eventide ; the part of thee that does not grow at night 3 may it 
 grow at ridge of middle-day.) 
 
 Sometimes too a peculiarly Celtic symbolism 
 occurs even in the most unlikely place, as in 
 an * Invocation for Justice ' for an intending 
 litigant, where the wronged man says he will 
 go forth in the likeness of a deer, in likeness 
 of a horse, in likeness of a serpent, and at last 
 as a king, meaning that he will be wary, 
 strong, wise, and dignified. 
 
 A beautiful and touching poem called 
 Eosai Bu Choir a Mholadh (Jesu, who ought 
 to be praised) is made the more wonderful 
 for us by the knowledge that it was composed 
 by a poor illiterate woman of Harris, and a 
 leper. She had to leave the upland com- 
 munity and dwell alone on a desolate tract of 
 seashore, and live on herbs and shell-fish. 
 After a time she became cured, and made this 
 touching song, remembered with affection 
 to this day. In some of the good-wishing 
 poems there are not only lovely lines but 
 
 238 
 
others which enshrine old names and legendary The Gael 
 associations once familiar to the ancient Gael an( * his 
 of a now forgotten day. Thus the Ora nam Herita e - 
 Buadh, or Invocation of the Graces, opens in 
 these lines : 
 
 I bathe thy palms 
 
 In showers of wine, 
 
 In the lustral fire. 
 
 In the seven elements, 
 
 In the juice of rasps, 
 
 In the milk of honey, 
 
 And I place the nine pure choice graces 
 
 In thy fair dear face, 
 
 The grace of form, 
 
 The grace of voice, 
 
 The grace of fortune, 
 
 The grace of goodness, 
 
 The grace of wisdom, 
 
 The grace of charity, 
 
 The grace of maidenliness, 
 
 The grace of whole-souled loveliness, 
 
 The grace of goodly speech. 
 
 This or a is one of the longest poems in Mr. 
 Carmichael's collection. In it is one of those 
 survivals to which I have alluded, as in the 
 verse beginning, ' Is tu gleus na Mnatha 
 Sithe': 
 
 Thine is the skill of the Fairy Woman, 
 Thine is the virtue of Bride (Bridget) the calm, 
 Thine is the faith of Mary the mild, 
 Thine is the tact of the woman of Greece, 
 
 239 
 
The Gael Thine is the beauty of Emer the lovely, 
 
 and his Thine is the tenderness of Darthula delightful, 
 
 Heritage. Thine is the courage of Maebh the strong, 
 
 Thine is the charm of Honey- Mouth. 
 
 How typically Gaelic this is, with its 
 mixture of Christian and old Celtic and pagan 
 lore, the Virgin Mary and St. Bride Muime 
 Chriosd (Christ's Foster- Mother) alternating 
 with the Fairy Woman and with some dim 
 legend of Helen of Troy, 1 and she again with 
 the fair wife of Cuchulain, the great champion 
 of Gaeldom, and with Deirdre (Darthula 
 Deardhuil Dearshul as in this Gaelic text), 
 the Helen of the Gael, and with Maeve, the 
 Dark Queen whose name and personality 
 loom so vast and terrible in ancient Gaelic 
 history, and ' Honey-Mouth ' (Binne-bheul), 
 whom I take to be Angus, the God of Love. 
 
 Of a singular and touching beauty also is 
 the strange* 'farewell' or death poem called 
 An Treoraich Anama, The Soul-Leading or 
 sometimes Fois Anama, Soul Peace. This is 
 slowly intoned over the dying person by some 
 dear and intimate friend, and all present join 
 in his strain. During the prayer, the anama 
 charu, or soul friend, makes the sign of the 
 cross with the right thumb over the lips of 
 
 1 At least I take it that Is tu gniomh na mnatha Greuig is an 
 allusion to Helen. 
 
 240 
 
the dying. A strange scene, truly, and fit for The Gael 
 a Gaelic Rembrandt, that of the smoke- and his 
 begrimed turf cottage of a poor crofter, with Heritage, 
 the soul friend and others near and dear 
 intoning this invocation to 'strong Michael, 
 high king of the angels,' and the dying man 
 with his feet already abhuinn dubh a bhais (in 
 the black river of death), and his soul about 
 to go on its long wayfaring across the 
 beanntaibh na bithbhuantachd (the mountains 
 of eternity). 
 
 The whole second section consisting of the 
 Aimsire, or Seasons Chants, is fascinating and 
 valuable to an extraordinary degree, and in 
 no part of the two volumes is there such a 
 wealth of valuable commentary, particularly 
 in the long sections devoted to St. Michael 
 and to Sloinntireachd JShride, the genealogy 
 of St. Bride, the Mary of the Gael, the beloved 
 Muime Chriosd, Christ's foster-mother, the 
 dearest of all the great dead to the heart of 
 every true Gael. Michael is the Poseidon 
 of the Gael, is indeed no other than Man- 
 annan, perhaps the greatest of the Celtic gods. 
 From Mounts St. Michael in Brittany and in 
 Cornwall to Ard-Micheil in far North Uist 
 there were temples to his honour, and to-day 
 the scattered names keep him in remembrance, 
 and many places have remains. His legendary 
 Q 241 
 
The Gael tomb, though Mr. Carmichael does not allude 
 and his to this, is at Kilmicheil, in the Kyles of Bute ; 
 Heritage. ^ ut p er h a p S this was not the brian Micheil, 
 the god, but some good saint from Columba's 
 brotherhood on lona. To this day on the 29th 
 of September the Feast of St. Michael is still 
 celebrated in the Hebrides, and perhaps else- 
 where ; but the ceremonies are much curtailed, 
 and are rapidly being ignored and forgotten. 
 In the invaluable pages which Mr. Carmichael 
 has devoted to ' Michael nam Buadh ' and to 
 St. Bride there is a treasure of legendary lore 
 and beauty, a profoundly significant record of 
 now forgotten customs. 
 
 In lovely and primitive beauty the third 
 section, that of the Oibre, or Chants of Labour, 
 stands unique. These kindling blessings and 
 smooring-of-the-peats blessings, these herding 
 croons and milking croons, these shepherd 
 songs and reaping chants, these beautiful 
 lamb-marking chants and quaint waulking or 
 warping songs and loom blessings, these hunt- 
 ing blessings and sea prayers, and solemn ocean 
 blessing, for sure there is not in any country 
 in the world so beautiful a heritage. 
 
 What would the sportsman of to-day think 
 of the young Gaelic huntsman, who was con- 
 secrated before he began his experiences ? Oil 
 was put on his head, a bow placed in his hand, 
 
 242 
 
 
and he was required to stand with bare feet The Gael 
 on the bare grassless ground, and to take a and his 
 solemn oath as to what not to do not to kill Heritage, 
 a bird sitting, nor a beast lying down, nor the 
 mother of a brood, nor the swimming duck (i.e. 
 because of her young), and so forth. 
 
 The white swan of the sweet gurgle, 
 The speckled dun of the brown tuft 
 
 are to be held free. The Beannachadh Seilg 
 ends quaintly with 
 
 [And with you for guidance be] 
 The fairy swan of Bride of flocks, 
 The fairy duck of Mary of peace. 
 
 Fascinating as is the second volume its appeal 
 is to the folklorist primarily. Here are scores 
 of strange and often in their inconsequence 
 bewildering examples of the eolas and sian, 
 the charm or spell. These range from the 
 beautiful ' Charm of the Lasting Life ' to 
 various spells of the evil eye and to mysterious 
 and weird maledictions. In the Miscellaneous 
 section are some singular poems, notably Ban- 
 tighearna Bhinn, the Melodious Lady-Lord, 
 and the Duan nan Daol, or Poem of the 
 Beetles, with interesting notes by the trans- 
 lator dealing with this ancient and peculiar 
 Christian superstition. The great collection 
 
 243 
 
The Gael ends with a strange and apt little song, a 
 
 and his fragment of a sea chant perhaps. 
 
 Heritage. 
 
 Mar a bha, As it was, 
 
 Mar a iha, As it is, 
 
 Mar a bhitheas As it shall be 
 
 Gu brath. Evermore. 
 
 Ri tragadh, With the ebb, 
 
 'S ri lionadh. With the flow. 
 
 There is an appendix of the names of the 
 reciters to whom Mr. Carmichael was indebted, 
 their occupation, place of residence, and dis- 
 trict. Many of his informants were women 
 as Ciorsdai Macleod, who had much lore 
 about the sluagh, the fairy hosts, and the 
 second sight ; or Morag Mackay, who had her 
 isolated cot among the green, grassy mounds 
 of the ruined nunnery on the lovely little 
 island of Heisgeir-nan-Cailleach ; or Oighrig 
 Maccriomthain (Maerimmon), 'who had many 
 beautiful songs ' ; or Isebeal Chisholm, a 
 wandering tinker of North Uist, who knew 
 innumerable incantations and incantation 
 formulae ; or Fionnaghal Macleod, of Clachan- 
 reamhar, in South Uist, 'who was full of 
 occult lore and old beliefs of many kinds.' 
 
 There was another woman, Mary Macrae 
 of Harris, from whom Mr. Carmichael learned 
 
 244 
 
much, including the beautiful prayer and The Gael 
 invocation, Dia Liom A Laighe, ' God with and his 
 me lying down/ given in vol. i. In her youth 
 this woman came to the Hebrides from Kintail 
 with her father, Alexander, whose mother was 
 one of the celebrated ten daughters of Macleod 
 of Rarasay, mentioned by Dr. Johnson and 
 Boswell. Let me finish this article by quoting 
 what Mr. Carmichael has to say of her, for 
 indeed I think she also is a type of the half 
 forlorn and weird, half wildly gay and young 
 spirit of her ancient, disappearing race, ever 
 ready to dance to its own shadow if nothing 
 else be available, yet so sad with a sadness 
 that must live and pass in silence. 
 
 She often walked with companions, after the work 
 of the day was done, distances of ten and fifteen miles 
 to a dance, and after dancing all night walked back 
 again to the work of the morning fresh and vigorous 
 as if nothing unusual had occurred. She was a faithful 
 servant and an admirable worker, and danced at her 
 leisure and carolled at her work like ' Fosgay Mhoire,' 
 our Lady's lark, above her. The people of Harris 
 had been greatly given to old lore and to the old 
 ways of their fathers, reciting and singing and dancing 
 and merry-making ; but a reaction occurred, and 
 Mary Macrae's old-world ways were abjured and con- 
 demned. But Mary Macrae heeded not, and went on 
 in her own way, singing her songs and ballads, intoning 
 her hymns ahd incantations, and chanting her own 
 
 245 
 
The Gael ' port-a-bial ' (mouth- music), and dancing to her own 
 and his shadow when nothing better was available. 
 Heritage. 
 
 Truly Mary Macrae stands for her people, 
 
 who, poor and ignored remnant as they are, 
 heed little the loud ways of a world that is 
 not for them, but go their own way, singing 
 their songs and ballads, intoning hymns or 
 incantations, chanting their own wild, sea- 
 smitten music, and dancing to their own 
 shadow, to the shadow of their ancestral 
 thought and dream, whether in blithe way- 
 wardness or in an unforgetting sorrow. 
 
 246 
 
SEUMAS: A MEMORY 
 
 ' A ghraidhean mo chridhe, 
 A ghaoilean mo dhaoine.' 
 
 (Thou dear one of my heart, 
 
 Thou beloved one of my people. ) 
 
 I HAVE again and again, since my first book, 
 Pharais, alluded to Seumas Macleod : and 
 as I have shown in the sketch called ' Barabal ' 
 and in the dedication of the volume entitled 
 The Divine Adventure, it is to this old High- 
 lander, as well as to my Hebridean nurse 
 Barabal, that I owe more than to any other 
 early influences. 
 
 Let me tell one other story of him, which 
 I have meant often to tell, but have as often 
 forgotten. 
 
 He had gone once to the Long Island, with 
 three fishermen, in their herring- coble. The 
 fish had been sold, and the boat had sailed 
 southward to a Lews haven where Seumas 
 had a relative. The younger men had 
 * hanselled' their good bargain overwell, and 
 were laughing and talking freely as they 
 
 247 
 
Seumas: walked up the white road from the haven. 
 
 a Memory. Something was said that displeased Seumas 
 greatly, and he might have spoken swiftly in 
 reproof; but just then a little naked child ran 
 laughing from a cottage, chased by his smiling 
 mother. Seumas caught up the child, who 
 was but an infant, and set him in their midst, 
 and then kneeled and said the few words of a 
 Hebridean hymn beginning : 
 
 ' Even as a little child 
 Most holy, pure. . . / 
 
 No more was said, but the young men under- 
 stood ; and he who long afterward told me 
 of this episode added that though he had often 
 since acted weakly and spoken foolishly, he 
 had never, since that day, uttered foul words. 
 Another like characteristic anecdote of Seumas 
 (as the skipper who made his men cease 
 mocking a ' fool ') I have told in the tale called 
 ' The Amadan ' in The Dominion of Dreams. 
 
 I remember asking him once as simply as 
 one might ask about the tides, or the weather 
 what he thought of the elements. And he 
 answered as simply. ' Fire is God's touch,' 
 he said: 'and light is God Himself: and 
 water is the mother of life.' I asked him 
 if he thought all the old gods were dead. He 
 asked why. I said that he had just spoken 
 
 248 
 
 \ 
 
of water as the mother of life, and yet that Seumas : 
 he had often told me legends of Manan, the a Memory, 
 god of the sea. 
 
 6 No,' he answered, e they are not all dead. 
 They think we are. They do not change. 
 They are very patient, the old ancient gods. 
 Perhaps it is because they do not care at all, 
 no, not a whistle of the wind, for what we 
 think or what we do.' 
 
 'But,' he added, "some have died. And 
 some are very old, and are sleeping, till they 
 get their youth again.' 
 
 * And Manan . . . does he live ? ' 
 
 6 Ay, for sure. He was here before Christ 
 came. He will see the end of all endings. 
 They say he sleeps in the hollows of great 
 oceans, and sits on mountain-bergs of ice at 
 the Pole, chanting an old ancient chant.' 
 
 Another time I asked him why he had 
 never married. ' There is only one love,' he 
 said simply, ' and that I gave to the woman 
 of my love. But she died of a fever when I 
 was down with it too. That was in Skye. 
 When I got up, my heart was in her grave. 
 I would be very young, then : but I had too 
 much life put away. And then,' he added, 
 with a smile half whimsical, half wistful, * to 
 marry a woman for comfort or for peace is 
 
 249 
 
Seumas: only for those who haven't the way of the 
 a Memory. one or the power to make the other.' I am 
 glad to know that another is hardly less 
 indebted to old Seumas Macleod. I am not 
 permitted to mention his name, but a friend 
 and kinsman allows me to tell this : that when 
 he was about sixteen he was on the remote 
 island where Seumas lived, and on the morrow 
 of his visit came at sunrise upon the old man, 
 standing looking seaward with his bonnet 
 removed from his long white locks ; and upon 
 his speaking to Seumas (when he saw he was 
 not ' at his prayers ') was answered, in Gaelic 
 of course, ' Every morning like this I take off 
 my hat to the beauty of the world.' 
 
 The untaught islander who could say this 
 had learned an ancient wisdom, of more 
 account than wise books, than many philo- 
 sophies. 
 
 I could write much of this revered friend 
 so shrewd and genial and worldly-wise, for all 
 his lonely life ; so blithe in spirit and swiftly 
 humorous ; himself a poet, and remembering 
 countless songs and tales of old ; strong and 
 daring, on occasion ; good with the pipes, as 
 with the nets ; seldom angered, but then with 
 a fierce anger, barbaric in its vehemence ; a 
 loyal clansman ; in all things, good and not so 
 good, a Gael of the Isles. 
 
 250 
 
AILEEN: A MEMORY 
 
 (The Soul of a Story) 
 
 ' But to what headland of a strange 
 shore, O my soul, art thou steering the 
 course of my ship?' PINDAR, Nem. iii. 
 
 THIS is not a story, in truth : it is a memory 
 and a speculation. 
 
 One day many things fell away from her, or 
 became unreal. A friend had said to her : 
 ' You cannot understand the thing I speak of, 
 because you have all happiness and all fortune, 
 and above all because you have no sorrow.' 
 
 She had said that surely this life was 
 enough : why did the mind crave so passion- 
 ately for more life, for life to be taken up 
 again ? It troubled her. Thought was meshed 
 in a net of dreams. Had she put her hand 
 
 251 
 
Aileen: secretly upon sorrow, she wondered. She 
 a Memory, remembered an old tale of a mother, young 
 too, and beautiful, who had all things of 
 desire, and yet never saw the white flame of 
 her heart's desire : to whom treasures of the 
 world were as dust by the highway, blossom 
 on the grass, foam on the shore. Below her 
 gladness lay an incalculable sorrow, as below 
 her beauty lay the enchantment of a beauty 
 greater than hers. ' You have all things,' said 
 those who loved her : and one added, ' You 
 of all people must long to live again, to taste 
 life anew.' 
 
 To live again to taste life anew Aileen 
 wondered. Did she ? No : in that thought 
 her soul shook like a flame in wind. Could 
 she not love Beauty, and yet be no bondager ; 
 reflect it, and yet be free of it, as a small pool 
 reflects the mysterious march of the stars? 
 It was a revelation to her that she had, un- 
 aware, nourished a pain that was with her 
 every day, as the shadow of a mountain over 
 a lake will lie in that lake from dawn to day- 
 set, though wind and sunlight weave traceries 
 from hour to hour. 
 
 And this pain it was an irremediable lone- 
 liness. She suffered the more because this 
 companion was unguessed by others. She 
 strove to overcome, to ignore, to hide this 
 
 252 
 
phantom, which so often came on the breath Aileen : 
 of a rose or the vibration of a lovely sound, a Memory, 
 unexpectedly, subtly, as though wilfully cloth- 
 ing itself in the extreme essence of beautiful 
 things, finding even the most delicate beauty 
 too obvious. 
 
 One day she knew that fear had been born 
 in her heart, and was a watcher there beside 
 the other dweller. This fear was of life. It 
 was a fear that life might not, after all, be laid 
 away with the suspended breath. It was the 
 fear of immortality. No, she thought, not 
 that perhaps. She did not know. It was 
 not the vague immortal life she feared : the 
 6 future ' so long taught as a surety and out- 
 held as a goal. It was the fear that life might 
 have to be taken up again, here : that the soul 
 had lives to go through, as, in the old tale, the 
 King of Ireland's son had to live and die in 
 the seven kingdoms of his inheritance before 
 he should at last be free and let forth to be a 
 wandering beggar. But the soul has little 
 concern in our happiness or unhappiness. 
 That silent watcher has her own inexplicable 
 sorrow and her own inexplicable joy. All the 
 rest is of hazard ; and we may be happy and 
 fortunate, and yet inwardly bow down before 
 entranced sorrow as we may have ills and 
 misfortunes and gathered griefs, and yet in- 
 
 253 
 
Aileen : wardly rejoice with the pulse of life and the 
 a Memory, inextinguishable hope of that strong passion 
 to be taken up again and lived anew. 
 
 
 
 * * 
 
 And I wonder I wonder how often I 
 have wondered if so beautiful and vivid a 
 soul could really pass and be as dust upon the 
 wind that is blown now this way and now 
 that, and in the end is gathered to the wilder- 
 ness of lifeless things. There is an old wisdom, 
 that what the soul itself desires, that it shall 
 surely have. And among the people to whom 
 Aileen belonged there is a mysterious saying, 
 ' It is not every one, happy or unhappy, or 
 good or bad, who has a living soul.' Is there 
 any wave upon the sea or leaf before the wind 
 more feeble than the aimless will? or is 
 there any disaster of the spirit worse than 
 that by which a winged destiny becomes a 
 wingless and obscure fate ? But who is to 
 know how fatality is measured or how ful- 
 filled who is to know that behind the broken 
 will there is not a heroic spirit upon whom 
 has fallen the mystery of untimely sleep ? 
 
 254 
 
THE FOUR WINDS OF EIRINN 
 
 ' Belles et puissantes sent 
 les harmonies nouvelles des 
 gens de ThuleV 
 
 MELCHIOR DB Voatti:. 
 
 FOREWORD 
 
 THIS essay originally appeared in The Fort- 
 nightly Review (February 1903), on the publi- 
 cation of the volumes entitled Cuchulain of 
 Muirthemne, Arranged and Retold by Lady 
 Gregory, and The Four Winds of Eirinn: 
 Poems by the late Ethna Carbery (Anna Mac- 
 manus). Since its appearance, and just as 
 the contents of the present volume had been 
 completed for printing, two books reached 
 me, which, coming out of the heart of Ireland, 
 should be mentioned under a title so distinc- 
 tive as that which heads this page. The 
 Divine Vision, the new volume of poetry of 
 Mr. George Russell (' A. E.'), has the spiritual 
 intensity, the rapt ecstasy of his most char- 
 acteristic verse. It is the poetry of a mystic 
 who is caught in the heavenly nets. But 
 
 255 
 
The Four though it is lifted at times on the Gaelic spirit 
 Winds of and has allusions to what is intimate in the 
 Eirinn. spiritual life of the Gael, it is not Gaelic in the 
 sense in which either of the two books dis- 
 cussed in the following essay is Gaelic. Ethna 
 Carbery's poems are the poems of the Irish 
 heart, and Miss Hull's and Lady Gregory's 
 retold saga-tales are the mirror of the ancient 
 Irish genius, as Mr. Yeats's poetry is pre- 
 eminently the poetry of the Irish spirit : but 
 the poems of ' A. E.' are the poems of a strayed 
 visionary, of a visionary strayed into Ireland, 
 and in love with that imagination and with 
 that dream, but obviously in himself of no 
 country set within known frontiers, of no land 
 withheld by familiar shores. Surcharged with 
 the intensest spirit of Ireland in the less mys- 
 tical and poetic sense, is the slim volume of a 
 handful of prose papers by Miss Ethel God- 
 dard, entitled Dreams for Ireland. This book 
 is uplifted with a radiant hope and with an 
 ecstasy of spiritual conviction that make the 
 heart young to contemplate : and would God 
 that its glad faith and untroubled prophecies 
 could be fulfilled in our time, or that in our 
 time even the shadows of the great things to 
 come could lighten the twilight road. If I 
 am too sad to share in full the radiant faith, 
 too sad to see with such glad eyes or to be so 
 
 256 
 
joyously dissuaded by lovely phantoms from The Four 
 
 the bitterness of things that are, I am sure-set Winds of 
 
 enough in the hope that great things are yet Eirinn - 
 
 to be accomplished, that a great destiny is 
 
 yet possible of achievement, an achievement 
 
 greater than the shaping of proud kingdoms 
 
 and empires. But of that I will say no more 
 
 here, having already said what I have to say 
 
 in this paper and in the first part of the section 
 
 called ' For the Beauty of an Idea.' Only, to 
 
 the little volume of Dreams for Ireland, and 
 
 to all who write and strive in a like spirit, the 
 
 spirit that brings victory or transforms defeat, 
 
 I would give this word of the great Pindar, 
 
 noblest of poets : But sowing in the fair flower 
 
 of this spirit . . . be not too careful for the 
 
 cost : loose free like a mariner thy sail unto 
 
 the wind. 
 
 If, with two books before me on which I 
 have something to say, I have chosen the title 
 of the lesser, that is because of its peculiar 
 fitness. The four winds of Eirinn breathe 
 through each, if with a stronger sound and 
 more primitive voice in that which deals with 
 a spiritual and material order long ago remote 
 from us, with the heroic passions and beauty 
 of a world that ceased before English was 
 
 R 257 
 
The Four grown a language. Even in the order of 
 Winds of importance I am not prepared to admit that 
 Eirinn. tne sma j} posthumous book of verse by Ethna 
 Carbery is so far behind the admirable com- 
 pilation we owe to Lady Gregory. But by 
 that I do not mean literary importance. The 
 poems of The Four Winds of Eirinn have 
 already appeared in Nationalist papers and 
 circulated throughout Ireland, and are loved 
 and treasured in innumerable hill-crofts and 
 moorside cabins. A thousand readers knew the 
 author's name who had no idea whether she 
 was of the small band of living singers or of 
 that great Irish company whose songs are the 
 treasure of a whole people. Only a few knew 
 that Ethna Carbery was the wife of a Donegal 
 patriot and writer of distinction, Seumas Mac- 
 Manus ; but long before her recent premature 
 death she had become a familiar presence at 
 many hearths. Her slender posthumous 
 volume may now be had at a sum which is 
 within the reach of all save the poorest of her 
 own land. That, however, need not trouble 
 any. There is not a poem in her book 
 unknown to hundreds who could not pur- 
 chase the little volume or could read it 
 were it possessed. One copy of a book such 
 as The Four Winds of Eirinn is enough to 
 light many unseen fires. Few readers out of 
 
 258 
 
touch with the Gaelic peasant have any idea The Four 
 of the power of a single enthusiast ; of how Winds of 
 one man, speaking in a barn at harvest-time, Einnn * 
 or by the croftside, or on the long road, or by 
 the fireside at the winter ceilidh, or at the 
 rising of the moon in the dusks of summer, 
 can spread from one to one, to a little group, 
 to a gathering clan, to countless unknown 
 brothers and sisters, tidings that are sprung 
 from a living heart and march in music and 
 are clothed in the speech of beauty. For there 
 is perhaps no people so susceptible to the 
 charm of verbal rhythm as the Gaelic Irish. 
 To put a sorrow or a joy into mournful or 
 dancing music is as natural to them as, to the 
 English temperament, it is natural to secrete 
 sorrow and to veil joy. 
 
 It would be uncritical to say that the poetry 
 of Ethna Carbery is compelling because of its 
 art. 
 
 Poetry may express itself subtly in the 
 ' signature of symbol,' or immediately in the 
 utterance of unveiled emotion. The one 
 method is not necessarily superior to the 
 other. But only the artist may dare to move 
 beyond elemental emotion. He who would 
 pass from the cries and tumult of the un- 
 loosened passions, and create anew in symbol 
 those ancient cries and that unresting tumult, 
 
 259 
 
The Four must be as Orpheus descending into the 
 
 Winds of inferno of defeated dreams, to come again, in 
 
 Einnn. ^ Q serene mystery of song, with lovelier 
 
 music and more far-seeing eyes. ' I tell you/ 
 
 says Nietzsche, ' one must have chaos within 
 
 to enable one to give birth to a dancing star.' 
 
 In each there is one perfection : simplicity. 
 
 In art, whose controlling spirit is deliberation, 
 
 there is nothing so deliberate as simplicity. 
 
 It may be an innate quality, a habit of the 
 
 mind; it is more often, perhaps, the disdain 
 
 of the imagination for artifice, the pride of the 
 
 imagination in a noble economy. 
 
 In itself, poetry is, to put an old definition 
 in a new way, the emotion of life rhythmically 
 remembering beauty : as pictorial art and the 
 art of verbal romance are the vision of life 
 seen in beauty and in beauty revealed : and as 
 music is the echo of life heard in beauty. 
 But the poet, in emotion rhythmically remem- 
 bering beauty, must, in the purging fire of 
 creation, be not less the artist than the poet 
 he who knows how to shape and control, 
 what to enhance, above all what to forgo, for 
 supreme art is the irreducible economy of the 
 imagination accepting the last austere law of 
 beauty. Emotion is not enough, nor, even, is 
 the passage of emotion into rhythmic utter- 
 ance enough. The thyme and marjoram are 
 
 260 
 
not yet honey, as Emerson said beautifully of The Four 
 the poetry of Thoreau. In the rarest lyric Winds of 
 verse there must be unseen lightning 'the Eirinn * 
 fiery lightning that goeth with all victory,' as 
 Pindar has it in one of his great odes. There 
 are few poets in a generation to whom the 
 ' fiery lightning ' is a reality. That generation 
 is fortunate, indeed, which produces wrestlers 
 in song worthy of an Olympian wreath of wild 
 olive, or a Pythian wreath of bay, or Isthmian 
 pine-garland, or the wild parsley of Nemea. 
 
 Ethna Carbery had not time to become a 
 rare artist, for she died in those early years 
 when emotion does not readily come under 
 the yoke of that severe discipline which is the 
 first commandment of art. She is not a poet 
 to compare with Mr. Yeats, for example. In 
 technical quality she has not the metrical 
 facility of Nora Hopper or Katharine Tynan. 
 Her lyrics lack the precision and distinction of 
 the verse of Moira O'Neill. But in essential 
 poetic faculty she stands high among the Irish 
 poets of to-day ; in this respect indeed she 
 falls behind none save Mr. Yeats and 'A. E.' ; 
 and as an Irish writer for an Irish public I 
 doubt if any of those just named has more 
 intimately reached the heart of the people. 
 The poetry of Mr. Yeats is a poetry that 
 appeals to those for whom the charm of beauty 
 
 261 
 
The Four is beyond any other charm, and to whom 
 Winds of beauty means a trained and ordered loveliness, 
 Eirmn. an( j m ^QJQ j s a more or l ess trained and 
 
 ordered sense of that loveliness. The poetry 
 of 'A. E.' is a poetry that appeals to those to 
 whom the charm of spiritual ecstasy is beyond 
 any other charm. The poetry of writers such 
 as Katharine Tynan and Nora Hopper, and in 
 a less degree of Moira O'Neill, is a poetry 
 written rather for the delight of those in sym- 
 pathy with the keen and warm life of the 
 people than for the people themselves. Their 
 poetry is rarely in the signature of interpreta- 
 tion ; they are minnesingers of charm and 
 distinction. There are not many of their 
 verses which would come naturally to the lips 
 of an Irish peasant, as would come one or two 
 of Moira O'Neill's Songs of the Glens of 
 Antrim ; for, to mention only the most sig- 
 nificant reason, they are commonly shaped in 
 the English and not in the Gaelic form of 
 thought and the form of thought is a still 
 subtler thing than the form of literary style. 
 True, most of Mr. Yeats's poetry is Gaelic in 
 its inward life, partaking of the Gaelic colour 
 and shaped in the Gaelic mould ; but he has 
 the esoteric manner of those ancient poetic 
 ancestors of his who were renowned for their 
 obscurity. In one of the old Irish tales a bard 
 
 262 
 
is alluded to with great praise, for after he had The Four 
 spoken before the king and the assembled Winds of 
 warriors, priests, and other bards, it was ad- 
 mitted that no other showed so great wisdom 
 or so irrefutably cut away the ground from 
 the matter in debate, because neither king nor 
 any other could understand him, ' so great was 
 his high, noble, beautiful obscurity.' And in 
 another episode, that Mr. Whitley Stokes has 
 translated for us in the Irische Texte, we learn 
 how one Senchan went on a circuit into Scot- 
 land, and how there ' the Spirit of Poetry met 
 him on the road in the shape of a loathly 
 monster, and conversed with him in the ob- 
 scurity of poetry.' Truly, the chronicler of 
 Senchan must have suffered much ere he 
 committed himself to that ' loathly monster ' ! 
 Well, I am sure that if Irish peasants were 
 to hear The Shadowy Waters, or even the 
 greater number of the poems of The Wind 
 Among the Reeds, they would, while respon- 
 sive to the music and the charm of atmosphere, 
 rank the author as the greatest of living bards 
 by virtue of his ' high, noble, beautiful ob- 
 scurity.' That they could really follow The 
 Shadowy Waters, as they have proved they 
 can follow with sympathy and delight The 
 Countess Cathleen or as they could follow 
 the stories of Hanrahan the Red in The Secret 
 
 263 
 
The Four Rose, or the episodical essays in The Celtic 
 Winds of Twilight is hardly to be believed. This is 
 not to disparage one side of Mr. Yeats 's 
 genius, nor is it to disparage a poem of great 
 beauty that I for one account among the 
 excelling things he has done. It is merely to 
 state what seems to be a fact, and to emphasise 
 the difference of approach in the work of a 
 poet like Ethna Carbery, a writer not less 
 saturated with the Gaelic atmosphere but 
 with a simplicity of thought and diction foreign 
 to the most subtle of contemporary poets, who 
 is never more subtle than when he creates a 
 verbal simplicity as a veil for occult thought 
 and remote allusion. 
 
 We hardly need the tribute of proud love 
 paid to Anna MacManus, in the pathetic little 
 memoir contributed by Mr. MacManus to this 
 posthumous edition of the poems of ' Ethna 
 Carbery.' In these poems we find everything 
 that the husband says of the wife and the 
 friend of the friend. No reader, surely, could 
 fail to recognise how ' before the tabernacle of 
 poor Ireland's hopes a perpetual flame burned 
 in her bosom ' ; how that from childhood even, 
 'every fibre of her frame vibrated with the 
 love of Ireland ' ; how that her love went out 
 to the hills of Tir-Chonaill long before her joy 
 quickened among the Donegal mountains, 
 
 264 
 
because of the passion come to her upon the The Four 
 Hills of her Heart ! Winds of 
 
 Eirinn. 
 
 ' Hills o my heart I 
 
 For sake of the yellow head that drew me wandering over 
 Your misty crests from my own home where sorrow 
 
 bided then, 
 
 I set my seven blessings on your kindly heather cover, 
 On every starry moorland loch, and every shadowy glen, 
 
 Hills o my heart ! ' 
 
 Her earliest as her latest verse has the 
 quality of song and the vibration of poetry. 
 And from first to last there is in it the Gaelic 
 note so distinctive from any other note. 
 Here Ethna Carbery is Irish in a sense in which 
 the other women poets of her hour and nation . 
 cannot claim to be : for there is no reason why 
 much of the poetry of Katharine Tynan, for 
 example, might not be written by one who 
 had lived away from Ireland and permitted 
 a foreign colour to be the colour of her 
 songs of life, or why much of the poetry of 
 Norah Hopper might not be written by one 
 who had never lived in Ireland and knew the 
 Ireland of the heart only imaginatively and as 
 one among many dreams in the secret gardens 
 of the imagination. But with Ethna Carbery 
 Ireland is always the Motherland, and she the 
 child that will not be put away from her, no, 
 not by any wandering of longing nor by any 
 
 265 
 
The Four chance of accident. How unmistakable the 
 
 f n te in the V6ry firSt lineS f thiS llttle collec " 
 tion of some seventy poems only two-thirds 
 
 of which had been revised by the author be- 
 fore her early death : 
 
 ' There 's a sweet sleep for my love by yon glimmering blue 
 
 wave, 
 
 But alas ! it is a cold sleep in a green-happed narrow grave. 
 O shadowy Finn, move slowly, 
 Break not her peace so holy, 
 
 Stir not her slumber in the grass your restless ripples 
 lave/ 
 
 And what an added pathos to this poem of 
 ' The Cold Sleep of Brighidin ' that it was the 
 singer's own death-lament as well as that of 
 the ' Breedyeen ' of her song ; and that she 
 too lies in sleep by the ' glimmering blue wave ' 
 of Loch Finn ! 
 
 Again, in the second poem, ' Shiela Ni 
 Gara ' : 
 
 ' Shiel Ni Gara, is it lonesome where you bide, 
 With the plover circling over and the sagans spreading 
 wide ? 
 
 ' Is it a sail ye wait, Shiela ? " Yea, from the westering 
 
 sun." 
 
 Shall it bring joy or sorrow ? " Oh joy, sadly won." 
 Shall it bring peace or conflict ? " The pibroch in the 
 
 glen, 
 
 And the flash and crash of battle where my banner shines 
 again." 
 
 266 
 
' Green shears of Hope rise round you like grass-blades The Four 
 
 after drouth, Winds of 
 
 And there blows a red wind from the East, a white wind Eirinn. 
 
 from the South, 
 A brown wind from the West, gradh, a brown wind from 
 
 the West 
 But the black, black wind from Northern hills, how can 
 
 you love it best ? ' 
 
 ( Said Shiela Ni Gara, " 'Tis a kind wind and a true, 
 For it rustled soft through Aileach's halls and stirred the 
 
 hair of Hugh : 
 Then blow, wind ! and snow, wind ! What matters 
 
 storm to me, 
 
 Now I know the fairy sleep must break and let the 
 sleepers free?" 
 
 ' But, Shiela Ni Gara, why rouse the stony dead, 
 Since at your call a living host will circle you instead ? 
 Long is our hunger for your voice, the hour is drawing 
 
 near 
 Oh, Dark Rose of our Passion call, and our hearts shall hear!' 
 
 Again, in the third, ' In Tir-Na'n-Og ' : 
 
 'In Tir-nan-Og, 
 In Tir-na'n-Og, 
 Summer and spring go hand in hand, and in the radiant 
 
 weather 
 
 Brown autumn leaves and winter snow come floating 
 down together. 
 
 * In Tir-nan-Og, 
 In Ttr-nan-Og, 
 All in a drift of apple-blooms my true love there is 
 
 roaming, 
 
 He will not come although I pray from dawning until 
 gloaming. 
 
 267 
 
The Four 'In Ttr-na'n-Og, 
 
 Winds Of In Tir-nan-Og, 
 
 Eirinn. The Sidke desired my Heart's Delight, they lured him 
 
 from my keeping. 
 
 He stepped within a fairy ring while all the world was 
 sleeping. 
 
 'In Tir-nan-Og, 
 In Tir-na'n-Og, 
 He hath forgotten hill and glen where misty shadows 
 
 gather, 
 
 The bleating of the mountain sheep, the cabin of his 
 father. 
 
 In Tir-nan-Og, 
 In Tir-nan-Og, 
 
 No memory hath he of my face, no sorrow for my sorrow, 
 My flax is spun, my wheel is husht, and so I wait the 
 morrow/ 
 
 But, in truth, one might quote from each 
 poem in the book. All are Gaelic in mould 
 of thought and colour of art. Of the sixty- 
 eight there are at least sixty whose very 
 names have a cradle-song for some of us, but 
 must be strangely foreign to many. * Shiela 
 Nf Gara,' 'The Song of Ciabhan,' 'Mo 
 Chraoibhin Cno,' ' Paistin Fionn,' 'Niamh,' 
 'The Brown Wind of Connaught,' 'Mo 
 Bhuachaill Cael-Dubh,' ' I-Breasil/ ' To the 
 Comely Four of Aran,' ' Vein o' my Heart,' 
 'Nial Glondubh to Gormlai/ 'The Shadow- 
 House of Lugh,' and the like. 
 
 These poems of the Four Winds of Eirinn 
 268 
 
fall into four groups, though (and wisely) not The Four 
 so arranged poems of the Gaelic past, poems Winds of 
 of love, poems of national longing and a Eirinn - 
 burning patriotism, and poems of the Gaelic 
 imagination and of the unquenchable longing 
 and desire of the heart for an Avalon of which 
 it dreams, but whose foam-white coasts it 
 cannot see for the ' Well o' the World's 
 End ' which it cannot reach : 
 
 'Beyond the four seas of Eri, beyond the sunset's rim, 
 It lies half forgot, in a valley deep and dim, 
 Like a star ofjtrefrom the skies' gold tire, 
 And whoso drinks the nine drops shall win his heart' s desire 
 At the Well o the World's End. 
 
 ' What go ye seeking, seeking, seeking, 
 
 O girl white-bosomed, O girl fair and young ? ' 
 e I seek the well-water, the cool well water, 
 
 That my love may have love for me ever on his tongue.' 
 
 Perhaps the poems which longest will lie 
 close to the Irish heart are those which show 
 the shadow of Irish sorrow and the rainbow- 
 gleam of Irish hope that sorrow and that 
 hope which from the grey glens of Donegal to 
 Kerry of the Kings inspire all the songs that 
 are sung, and all that is imperishable in the 
 nation's heart. Of these a typical example is 
 6 Mo Chraoibhin Cno' (Mo chreeveen no 
 literally ' My cluster of nuts/ figuratively 
 ' My brown-haired girl ' here used by the 
 
 269 
 
The Four poet as an analogue of Ireland, one of her 
 
 Winds of many secret names of love) : 
 Eirinn. 
 
 Mo CHRAOIBHfN CNO ! 
 
 ' A sword of light hath pierced the dark, our eyes have 
 
 seen the star. 
 O Mother, leave the ways of sleep now days of promise 
 
 are ; 
 
 The rusty spears upon your walls are stirring to and fro, 
 In dreams they front uplifted shields Then wake, 
 Mo Chraoibhin Cno ! 
 
 'The little waves keep whispering where sedges fold 
 
 you in, 
 And round you are the barrows of your buried kith 
 
 and kiri ; 
 
 O famine-wasted, fever-burnt, they faded like the snow 
 Or set their hearts to meet the steel for you, 
 Mo Chraoibhin Cno ! 
 
 ' Their names are blest, their caoine sung, our bitter tears 
 
 are dried ; 
 
 We bury sorrow in their graves, Patience we cast aside ; 
 Within the gloom we heard a voice that once was ours to 
 
 know 
 
 It was Freedom Freedom calling loud, Arise ! 
 Mo Chraoibhin Cno ! 
 
 ' Afar beyond that empty sea, on many a battle-place, 
 Your sons have stretched brave hands to death before 
 
 our foeman's face 
 Down the sad silence of your rest their war-notes faintly 
 
 blow, 
 
 And they bear an echo of your name of yours, 
 Mo Chraoibhin Cno ! 
 270 
 
' Then wake, a gradh ! we yet shall win a gold crown for The Four 
 your head, Winds of 
 
 Strong wine to make a royal feast the white wine and Eirinn. 
 
 the red 
 
 And in your oaken mether the yellow mead shall flow, 
 What day you rise, in all men's eyes a Queen, 
 Mo Chraoibhin Cno ! 
 
 < The silver speech our fathers knew shall once again be 
 
 heard ; 
 
 The fire-lit story, crooning song, sweeter than lilt of bird ; 
 The quicken-tree shall break in flower, its ruddy fruit 
 
 shall glow, 
 
 And the gentle people dance beneath its shade 
 Mo Chraoibhin Cno ! 
 
 ' There shall be peace and plenty the kindly open door, 
 Blessings on all who come and go the prosperous or the 
 
 poor 
 
 The misty glens and purple hills a fairer tint shall show, 
 When your splendid Sun shall ride the skies again 
 Mo Chraoibhin Cno ! ' 
 
 Alas ! 'tis but the old sweet impossible 
 dream for what is gone away upon the wind. 
 Not now, never again in this little world that 
 is our world, as we know it to-day, can come 
 this golden age, heralded by our returning 
 prayers. For us, the Gentle People have no 
 longer a life common with our own. They 
 have gone beyond grey unvisited hills. They 
 dwell in far islands perhaps, where the 
 rains of Heaven and the foam of the sea 
 guard their fading secrecies. Not here, in 
 
 271 
 
The Four any Avalon betwixt the last beaches of the 
 Winds of Hebrides and the stones of Carnac, shall that 
 Einnn. gj en ^ e f oun ^ j t h at s hore be touched, where 
 the old Gaelic world shall live anew. An 
 evil has fallen upon us, that may or may not 
 have been inevitable ; that may or may not 
 be from within ourselves as well as from with- 
 out. It is inevitable now. 
 
 'In Ttr-nan-Og, 
 In Tir-na'n-Og, 
 The blackbird lilts, the robin chirps, the linnet wearies 
 
 never, 
 
 They pipe to dancing feet of Sidlie and thus shall pipe for 
 ever/ 
 
 Yes, but that is in Tir-na'n-Og, the land of 
 the ever-young. That is in I-Breasil, the Isle 
 of Youth. That is in Flatheanas, where the 
 strong of soul are. It has no shores, that land ; 
 no boat's prow cleaves the surf around that 
 isle; we do not hear the laughing voices 
 yonder. Alas ! yes in Tir-na'ri-Og. But 
 now we front new ways. The spirit has 
 changed within us ; and with the changing of 
 the spirit in the soul of a nation all that was its 
 treasure must be lost too, all that cannot be 
 preserved against Time and the bitter moth. 
 And indeed we lament often for what never 
 was : only the same old desire of the heart, 
 the same old longing, that a thousand years 
 
 272 
 
ago dreamed against to-day, and that to-day The Four 
 re-dreams the dream of the world a thousand Winds of 
 years ago. Eirinn - 
 
 The happy years may come. Who shall 
 dare say No ? But they cannot come, as things 
 are : not for us, at least, longing in our own 
 way. For we long for what is gone, and going, 
 and we are caught in the great net which has 
 swept in our kindred, and all the nations. Can 
 any Gael honestly say that Ireland, that the 
 Highlands, that the Isles are in the deep sense 
 nearer true wellbeing now than they were 
 half a century ago, twenty years ago, ten years 
 ago? Depopulation, the decay of the old 
 language, the ceaseless pressure of whSat in 
 bitter unconscious irony is called the civilising 
 factor ; the deadening of a new and dull ideal 
 of prosperity, not a blithe weal but a restless 
 discontent ; the cancer of racial hate in Ireland, 
 the levelling and crushing curse of a growing 
 materialism in Scotland; the paralysing selfish- 
 ness of both native and alien landowners ; and, 
 with these, and much else, the losing of old 
 virtues in the half-eager, half-sullen assump- 
 tion of other ways and manners all this has 
 made, and is making, the passing of the old 
 order bitter and tragic for those whose hearts 
 are bound up in it, whose life is part of it, 
 whose souls are the offspring of its soul. 
 
 s 273 
 
The Four If I and others of my generation feel this, 
 Winds of how much more must those feel it whose 
 memories go far back ; who remember the 
 homeless glens, when the smoke of many 
 hearths rose in peace ; the deer-forests, where 
 the hillside crofts held a contented people ; 
 the islands where now the flocks of the capi- 
 talist sheep-farmer are the only inhabitants ? 
 A few days ago I met a grey-haired Highland 
 gentleman on his way back to the far Isles, to 
 take farewell of the last of his clan who upheld 
 the old ways and kept to the old traditions 
 and used the ancient speech. 'For it is all 
 going,' he said ; * no, it is all gone. Soon I will 
 be the last, there. They have no Gaelic now, 
 the young people. They and the others have 
 forgotten all that our fathers had of tale and 
 song. Our old world is passed away. It is a 
 new world we are in now. For them that 
 like it, it may be well ; it is not well for us 
 who do not like it. For me, as with Don- 
 nacha' Ban : 
 
 ' " 'S mithich tearnadh do na gleannaibh 
 O'n tha gruaimich air na beannaibh, 
 'S ceathach duinte mu na meallaibh 
 A' cur dallaidh air ar leirsinn." 
 
 (" It is time now to go down into the 
 glens, for gloom is fallen on the mountains, 
 
 274 
 
and mists shroud the hills, darkening our The Four 
 vision.")' Winds 
 
 There are still many of us who are of this of Eirinn - 
 broken clan. We have not wholly lost heart ; 
 there is much left to fight for ; there is still 
 one inspiring hope : but we know that nearly 
 all of what we would see stay must go, that 
 nothing of what we see going shall turn back, 
 that nothing of what we know gone shall 
 come again. 
 
 The secret of the Celtic muse is veiled in 
 tears. The poetry of the Gael is the poetry 
 of sorrow. It is not impossible that one day 
 a new triumphal pasan may be heard, the 
 clarions of joy. That, indeed, would be a 
 divine ministry of the patient^and watching 
 gods. 
 
 Years ago, when writing went with drifting 
 thought and not with thought rising from the 
 depths, I wrote this : without pain as a 
 memory, and without despair as a will-o'-the- 
 wisp, there would be no lyric beauty of 
 enduring worth. 
 
 But now I do not think this, though up to 
 a point its truth is obvious. For joy can be, 
 and ought to be, the supreme torch of the 
 mind ; and hope can be and ought to be the 
 inspiration of that grave ecstasy which is art 
 become religious, that is ... art expressing 
 
 275 
 
The Four an august verity, with the emotion of the life 
 Winds of that is mortal deepened by the passion of the 
 Eirinn - soul that is immortal. 
 
 ' So simple is the heart of man, 
 
 So ready for new hope and joy ; 
 Ten thousand years since it began 
 Have left it younger than a boy.' 
 
 Nevertheless it is true that pain is a wind that 
 goes deep into the obscure wood, and stirs 
 many whispers and lamentations among the 
 hidden leaves, and sends threnodies on long 
 waves from the swaying green shores of oak 
 and pine and beech. s It is that which gives 
 artists the strongest power of expression,' 
 wrote one who for himself knew the truth of 
 what he said, the great Millet. But despair 
 . . . that is a quality of the mind, while pain 
 is an elemental condition of life. It is in 
 nature for all that lives to know pain : it is 
 not natural for anything that lives to know 
 despair. So while despair may have its beauty, 
 as a desolate polar sea has its own desolate 
 beauty, or as a barren hillside without green 
 of grass or song of bird may have a wild and 
 barren beauty, it is the beauty of what redeems 
 light and cloud, mist and shadow and air 
 not a beauty inherent, not the beauty of those 
 things which fundamentally are elemental and 
 eternal. The clouds of man's hopes and 
 
 276 
 
dreams which drift through the human sky, The Four 
 and the wind of the spirit that shepherds Winds of 
 them, belong to the higher regions. Here, Eirinn - 
 by some subtlety of association, I recall those 
 beautiful lines in The Last Adventure of 
 Balaustion : 
 
 1 Why should despair be ? Since, distinct above 
 Man's wickedness and folly, flies the wind 
 And floats the cloud. . . .' 
 
 And this poor girl, with her heart of song 
 and her frail reed of life, who died so young 
 among the mountains of Donegal, she, too, 
 knew it. What a caoine of world-old sadness 
 in that poem she wrote not long before her 
 death, ' The Passing of the Gael ' : 
 
 ' The whip of hunger scourged them from the glens and 
 
 quiet moors, 
 
 But there 's a hunger of the heart that plenty never cures ; 
 And they shall pine to walk again the rough road that 
 
 is yours. 
 
 ' They are going, going, going, and we cannot bid them 
 
 stay; 
 The fields are now the strangers', where the strangers' 
 
 cattle stray. 
 Oh ! Kathaleen Ni Hoolikan, your way 's a thorny way / ' 
 
 But pain wearies even the sense of pain, 
 and it is a relief to turn to this dead young 
 singer's poetry of fantasy. How fine much 
 
 277 
 
The Four o f this is, whether simple as < The King of 
 
 Winds of Ireland's Cairn ' : 
 Einnn. 
 
 ' Blow softly down the valley, 
 
 O wind, and stir the fern 
 That waves its green fronds over 
 The King of Ireland's cairn. 
 
 ( Say, down those halls of Quiet 
 
 Doth he cry upon his Queen ? 
 Or doth he sleep contented 
 To dream of what has been ? ' 
 
 Or of more subtle thought and remoter 
 expression in poems such as that ('Angus 
 the Lover ') which begins : 
 
 ' I follow the silver spears flung from the hands of dawn '- 
 
 or as ' The Green Plover,' or as ' The Shadow- 
 House of Lugh ' : 
 
 ' Dream-fair beside dream waters, it stands alone : 
 A winging thought of Lugh made its corner stone : 
 A desire of his heart raised its walls on high. 
 
 ' He hath no vexing memory of blood in slanting rain, 
 Of green spears in hedges on a battle plain ; 
 But through the haunted quiet his love's silver words 
 Blew round him swift as wing-beats of enchanted birds. 
 
 . ' He plays for her pleasure on his harp's gold wire 
 
 The laughter-tune that leaps alone in trills of fire ; 
 She hears the dancing feet of Sidhe where a white moon 
 
 gleams, 
 
 And all her world is joy in the House of Dreams. 
 278 
 
' His days glide to night, and his nights glide to day : The Four 
 
 With circling of the amber mead, and feasting gay : Winds of 
 
 In the yellow of her hair his dreams lie curled, Eirinn. 
 And her arms make the rim of his rainbow world.' 
 
 Or in poems of the longing of love, as ' Feith- 
 failge ' : 
 
 'The blue lake of Devenish ! 
 I vex the purple dark with sighs 
 
 (The blue lake of Devenish) 
 Across the world my sorrow flies, 
 A-hunger for the grey and wistful 
 Beauty of Feithfailge's eyes.' 
 
 Or as ' At the Well of the Branchy Trees,' or 
 * Hills o' My Heart,' or Mo Bhuachaill Cael- 
 Dubh,' or ' The Sad Song of Finian,' with 
 its true Gaelic hyperbole of lament in 
 
 { I am adrift on the waves of the world 
 
 Ochon ! Ochon I 
 
 Tossed by the storm, by the green seas whirled, 
 All for the sake of the yellow-curled 
 Slender girl that I wished my own ' 
 
 or a half-score more as fine. 
 
 There is a legend common throughout the 
 Highlands and Isles, and current in many 
 parts of Ireland, about the Lennan-Shee 
 (Leannain-Sidhe), or Fairy Lover. Only the 
 other day I heard a striking variant of the 
 usual tale, and at the same time a good answer. 
 One of the hearers objected that all these 
 
 279 
 
The Four stories of the Lennan-Shee were untrue, for 
 Winds of he had lived many years in the Highlands and 
 Einnn. j^ never heard of any who had met or seen 
 or known of a fairy lover, and that what one 
 was not aware of in a country would not be 
 existing in that country. ' As for that,' said 
 the narrator, ' 9 $ iomadh rud a bhios am measg 
 an f sluaigh air nack bifios agaibh-sa' (' There 's 
 many a thing among the people of which you 
 are left in ignorance'), a remark greeted all 
 round with 6 Tha sin f tor* ('That is true'). 
 And of the many who in one way or another 
 have dealt with this legend, I recall none who 
 has done so more subtly than Ethna Carbery 
 in The Love-Talker ' : 
 
 ' I know not what way he came, no shadow fell behind, 
 But all the sighing rushes swayed beneath a fairy wind : 
 The thrush ceased its singing, a mist crept about, 
 We two clung together with the world shut out. 
 
 ' Beyond the ghostly mist I could hear my cattle low, 
 The little cow from Ballina, clean as driven snow, 
 The dun cow from Kerry, the roan from Inisheer, 
 Oh, pitiful their calling and his whispers in my ear ! 
 
 ' His eyes were a-fire ; his words were a snare ; 
 I cried my mother's name, but no help was there ; 
 I made the blessed Sign : then he gave a dreary moan, 
 A wisp of cloud went floating by, and I stood alone.' 
 
 How natural it seems to turn from this 
 Gaelic singer of to-day to the unknown 
 
 280 
 
shenachies who told the primitive Gaelic The Four 
 legends of the Cuchulain cycle at a time Winds of 
 when the Angles had not troubled the fens of Eirinn - 
 England to that largely lost and much con- 
 fused cycle of legendary lore from which, in 
 Cuchulain of Muirthemne (Coohoolin of Mur- 
 ev-na, as pronounced), Lady Gregory has with 
 much skill and no little beauty evolved a 
 sequent narrative ! For the two worlds meet, 
 thus : or rather, they are one. Time makes 
 no division when the mental outlook, the 
 mental life, remains unchanged save in what 
 is unessential in manner and method. The 
 Gael who believes in the fairy lover can also 
 well believe in the story of the love of Angus, 
 son of the Dagda, for Caer Ormaith, daughter 
 of Ethel Anbual ; and how for one year Caer 
 would be a beautiful woman and for the next 
 year be a white swan on a mountain loch, and 
 how Angus, because of the longing of his 
 love, took swan-shape upon him by the loch- 
 side, so that the lovers spread their wings and 
 rose from the loch, in their going their wings 
 making a music so sweet that all who heard 
 it fell asleep for three days and three nights. 
 Or in that tale of how Cathbad the Druid 
 told the childless Fedlimid that his wife would 
 bear a daughter for whom many great heroes 
 and bright candles of the Gael would lose 
 
 281 
 
The Four their lives ; and of how the girl was born, she 
 
 Winds of f or whom heroes would fight and kings go 
 
 seeking; And how Cathbad said, 'Let Dirdre 
 
 be her name, sweet menace that she is ' : and 
 
 how he chanted to her : 
 
 6 Many will be jealous of your face, O Jlame of 
 beauty ; for your sake heroes shall go to exile. For 
 there is harm in your face : it will bring banishment 
 and death on the sons of Icings. In your fate, beau- 
 tiful child, are wounds and ill-doings, and shedding of 
 blood. 
 
 4 You will have a little grave apart to yourself ; you 
 will be a tale of wonder for ever, Deirdre? 
 
 Or in that tale of how Fedelm of the Sidhe 
 the young girl of the mouth of red berries, 
 with voice sweeter than the strings of a curved 
 harp, and skin showing through her clothes 
 like the snow of a single night was of a 
 sudden seen by Maeve, the Warrior- Queen, 
 sitting on a shaft of her chariot, and had no 
 word to say to the Queen about her hosts of 
 Cruachan gathered for battle against Cuchulain 
 and the Ultonians, but only, over and over, 
 ' I see crimson on them, I see red.' And 
 how true that foretelling was, when that great 
 army of Ireland was swept away, c wandering 
 and going astray like a mare among her foals 
 that goes astray in a strange place, not knowing 
 what path to take ' ; and how the remnant 
 
 282 
 
crossed the ford of the Sionnan at Athluain, The Four 
 notwithstanding that in Maeve's company Winds of 
 were unvanquishable heroes and three princes 
 of the Sidhe in shining armour, Delbaeth, and 
 Cermat Honey-mouth, and Angus Og, son of 
 the Dagda for even the gods do not always 
 prevail against the souls of the greatest. 
 
 Or in that tale of how the harpers of 
 Cainbile came to Maeve's camp, and played 
 on magic harps ; but how they were driven 
 forth as spies, and followed with spears till 
 they reached the great stone of Lecmore, 
 when the harpers took on themselves the 
 shape of wild deer and went away. Or in 
 that tale of the Wedding of Maine, son of 
 Ailell and Maeve, where beauty and death 
 are as subtly interwoven as in the familiar 
 Gaelic sgeul of the love of Baile the Sweet- 
 Spoken and Aillinn, when, after death, grave- 
 wood grew into grave - wood and green 
 branches from the North and the South be- 
 came one overhanging branch under which 
 the four winds moved. Or in that tale of 
 how, after the heavy wound of Fraech, ' boy 
 darling of the King of the Sidhe of Ireland,' 
 a sorrowful crying was heard on Cruachan, 
 and strange women in beautiful raiment were 
 seen on the hill, and how Fraech in his sick- 
 ness called suddenly, ' Lift me out of this, for 
 
 283 
 
The Four that is the cry of my mother and of the women 
 Windsof O f Boann'; and how he was carried to 
 Cruachan, and left upon the hill, and how 
 thrice fifty queens bore him to the secret 
 gates, crying a sorrowful cry; and how it is 
 from this cry that the musicians of Ireland 
 learned the sorrowful cry of the women of 
 the Sidhe. 
 
 Or in a hundred tales akin to these tales, in 
 this book and in other books, and in many 
 minds, might belief as well be. 
 
 To come under the enchantment of a book 
 such as this legendary lore gathered by Lady 
 Gregory from many sources, with constant 
 excellence in choice, retold with careful art of 
 simplicity, and not rarely in that spellbound 
 prose which is born of the enchanted mind- 
 one must be, as Mr. Yeats says in his finely 
 persuasive rather than critical preface to this 
 book, as were the people of old-time, who 
 were in love with a story and gave themselves 
 up to imagination as if to a lover. Not other- 
 wise can this sea of troubling winds and 
 troubled waters, and of bewildering currents 
 and rising and falling tides, be rightfully 
 enjoyed. To change the image, the book 
 must be approached as one approaches a 
 forest, dense with intricate byways, proud 
 with wide glades, given over to the wilder- 
 
 284 
 
ness at times, and to enter which with the The Four 
 dews of dawn means that one need not Winds of 
 look to emerge till the stars are come. The 
 paths may be difficult, sometimes the way 
 seem trackless. But 'delight will always 
 overtake one in the end.' 
 
 Cuchulain of Muirthemne is no mere book 
 of pleasure for the eager or the weary reader. 
 It is the initial part of a work which, possibly, 
 may ultimately be considered worthy to rank 
 with the Arthurian chronicle of Malory and 
 with the Mabinogion which Lady Charlotte 
 Guest (in some such manner as Lady Gregory 
 has now done) gave to the world. Had Mac- 
 pherson been profoundly intimate with Gaelic 
 life, and had he been a Gaelic scholar had he 
 been free from the ideals of a Lowland bour- 
 geois, and not caught in the intellectual 
 sentimentality of the eighteenth century of 
 his day he might have achieved a triumph 
 as great, I think greater, perhaps, than any of 
 these. For with all my appreciation of Lady 
 Gregory's achievement, I cannot think with 
 Mr. Yeats that it is so great a book as he 
 maintains. This is not to disparage a work 
 which calls for gratitude. But Lady Gregory's 
 Cuchulain is not the shapen triumph of imagi- 
 nation ; it is and how different this is, while 
 so fine the skilful and in the main satisfying 
 
 285 
 
The Four relation of many imaginations by an enthusiast, 
 Winds of and an enthusiast who shows that she is also 
 Eirinn. an art j st j n t | ie use o f wor ds. 
 
 Surely one need not mistake the editorial 
 faculty for the creative faculty. A year or 
 two ago Miss Eleanor Hull summarised the 
 Cuchulain Saga, achieving therein a work of 
 great value as well as of interest. Without 
 it, it is very doubtful if Lady Gregory's book 
 would be as nearly excellent as it is. For 
 students of Gaelic legend and literature, more- 
 over, Miss Hull's ' Saga ' is much the more 
 valuable work : and I am glad of this oppor- 
 tunity to draw attention to its unfair neglect 
 since the appearance of its more literary but 
 in one or two vital respects much less satisfying 
 rival. Cuchulain ofMuirthemne is the ordered 
 and artistic narration : the Cuchulain Saga is 
 the careful analysis, or, to put it another way, 
 the crude architectural structure from which 
 a symmetrical edifice was to emerge. But 
 one knows that there is another and greater 
 way : the way that a Gaelic poet of the first 
 order might take the way that would give 
 us all the beauty and wonder gathered out of 
 the past, with a new beauty, a new wonder, 
 gathered somehow, we know not how, out of 
 the present and yet, when we look curiously, 
 neither the floating wonder nor the rising and 
 
 286 
 
falling beauty being dissociate in time, but The Four 
 one wonder, and one beauty. A new and Winds of 
 greater Macpherson, working from deep know- Eirinn - 
 ledge truly in a true way ; a new Villemarque, 
 with more scrupulous heed and with a famili- 
 arity as great and a power greater than that 
 of Brizieux ; a Celtic William Morris what 
 might such an one make of the Cuchulain 
 Cycle, the Fionn Cycle, of Oisin of the Deer ? 
 
 Sir Samuel Ferguson might have done it, 
 but he was never on the crest, only alone for 
 a time on the uplift of the great wave, and he 
 lacked the supreme gift of the Celt, the gift 
 of an incommunicable charm. Mr. Yeats 
 might do it : the Wanderings of Oisin uphold 
 the chance. But I fear the work is for one 
 far less preoccupied than he with the many 
 subtle problems of art and of the shaken mind 
 and of life turning for ever among her revolv- 
 ing mirrors. It will have to be the life-work 
 of a single-minded dreamer and maker, as, 
 with all its insincerities and banalities, Ossian 
 was the life-work of that perplexing genius, 
 at once so high and so small, so universal and 
 so provincial, James Macpherson. 
 
 For I feel this about Cuchulain of Muir- 
 themne, that it is a fine ideal finely fulfilled 
 (and how much that is in a day of few ideals 
 and few fulfillings !), but that it is I know 
 
 287 
 
The Four not what ? over-scholarly in its unwavering 
 Winds of heed to be consciously the thing it sets out 
 rmn. to be : over-cold in its strange sameness of 
 emotion : a little chill with the chill of studious 
 handicraft. Once, with two-thirds of the book 
 read, and somewhat weary of its even waters, 
 I turned to the earlier and fragmentary and 
 in every way cruder telling of Standish 
 jO'Grady. It was like leaving the banks of a 
 /still loch for the slippery heather slopes of a 
 mountain torrent but the sudden freshness, 
 the leap, the vigour, the cry in the ears, the 
 stir, the rush ! In a word, it seems to me 
 that the literary flaw in Lady Gregory's version 
 is its monotonous passionlessness. Rightly or 
 wrongly, I have the idea that her mind may 
 have quickened continually when she was 
 writing this book, but that her pulse never 
 quickened. * It is not the book for the beating 
 of my heart to be heard in,' the author might 
 reply. But can that plea be averred of any 
 book of the imagination, whether primary or 
 reflected ? It is here that style that subtle 
 revealer brings to the test. And to me the 
 style of this book, simple and gracious as it is, 
 reveals rather an enamoured mind than an 
 enthralled heart. Perhaps, however, one less 
 familiar than the present writer with the 
 themes and legends which Lady Gregory has 
 
 288 
 
woven in sequence could better estimate the The Four 
 general value of this book. That I am indeed Winds of 
 ready to admit. For I miss, too often, a mn * 
 wilder but a native note that she has purpose- 
 fully ignored ; sometimes wisely perhaps, 
 sometimes inevitably I suppose, sometimes I 
 cannot but feel to the weakening of her tale 
 and the adumbrating of that tale's features 
 for those whose approach is new. Again and 
 again I have felt her rendering to be, from 
 this standpoint, disastrous. The wind was out 
 of the leaves, the fires had faded, the authentic 
 voices were the dim echoes of phantoms. 
 And though, again, I feel with others the 
 charm and recognise the art of Lady Gregory's 
 style, I find in it, constantly, a lack of virility 
 that is at times almost prettiness as, to 
 take the first instance I can come upon at 
 random, the fatal vulgarism (one indulged in 
 not once only but again and again) of the 
 misuse of 'nice' in the story of Aileel's 
 treachery upon Fraech ' So he went and 
 broke a branch off the tree . . . and it is 
 beautiful he looked over the black water, his 
 body without fault and his face so nice,' etc. 
 
 But lapses of the kind are perhaps inevitable. 
 In the main the fine and quiet art of the 
 telling is the justification of the aim the writer 
 had in view to write an English as nearly 
 
 T 289 
 
The Four as possible the vernacular of those who now 
 Winds of have the foreign language as their own 
 Einnn. language, but still retain the Gaelic mind. 
 
 To say that every lover of Celtic literature 
 should obtain, should become familiar with 
 this book, is to say what is obvious. But 
 surely others also may read it with pleasure : 
 as, a century ago, readers knowing nothing of 
 the mabinogi of Bronwen, or the mabinogi of 
 Pwyll, or the mabinogi of Manwyddan, turned 
 with curiosity, and then with interest, and 
 then with delight to these and other mabi- 
 nogion in the beautiful English retelling of 
 Lady Charlotte Guest ; as, later, readers turned 
 to the Arthurian romances under the com- 
 pelling spell of a great poet; as, later, readers 
 ignorant of Scandinavian poetry and mythology 
 turned to a new world, led by the chanting 
 voice of the poet of Sigurd the Volsung. One 
 does not need knowledge of Celtic myth and 
 legend in order to find charm and delight in 
 Cuchulain, though the wider the knowledge 
 and the deeper the intimacy the greater that 
 charm and the greater that delight. If one 
 love the tale of Homeric war, if one quicken 
 at the name of Achilles, or at the doom of 
 the house of Agamemnon, or at the wander- 
 ings of Odysseus, or at mention of the place 
 where Kronos is the silent King, or at the tale 
 
 290 
 
of Danae imprisoned in her tower, or at the The Four 
 tale of Penelope, or at the tale of Helen, Winds of 
 surely he can turn also to like ancestral tales Einnn - 
 of the mighty warfare of Moytura, of the 
 Titanic conflict by the Ford of the two 
 champions of the Gael, of that terrible battle 
 at Muirthemne, of Cuchulain that peerless 
 lord, of the doom of the House of Usna, of 
 the Odyssey of the sons of Turenn, of 
 Conann's Tower of Death, of Ethne in the 
 rock-set Dun of Balor, of Emer the lovely 
 and noble wife of Cuchulain, and of Dirdre, 
 whose beauty is undying legend in the songs 
 and memories of the Gael to this day. 1 
 
 Not in the Mabinogion, not in the Scan- 
 dinavian Sagas, not even in the Arthurian 
 romances are there women who hold us more 
 
 1 The greatest living Celticist, M. d'Arbois de Jubainville, 
 reminds the general reader, what to the specialist is obvious, 
 that Celtic mythology is not copied from Greek mythology. 
 'It is based/ he says, 'upon conceptions originally identical 
 with those from which Greek mythology is derived, but has 
 developed the fundamental elements of the myth in a manner 
 of its own, which is as independent as it is original. ' As again, 
 in an earlier chapter, he writes : e The characteristics common 
 to Gaelic and to Greek mythology come from an old foundation 
 of Graeco-Celtic legends anterior to the separation of the two 
 races, at that unknown period when the Hellenes, or Greeks, 
 abandoning to the Celts the cold valley of the Danube and the 
 mist-laden regions of Western Europe, settled down to the 
 warm plains and the splendid coasts of the peninsula lying to 
 the south of the Balkans.' 
 
 291 
 
The Four enthralled than Emer holds us, than Deirdre 
 Winds of holds us, than wild Maeve holds us as with a 
 Eirinn. S p ea r, than Findabair, that frail reed shaken 
 in the wind, that Fand of the Sidhe. How 
 beautiful this Fand ' And the meaning of 
 the name Fand is, a tear that passes over the 
 fire of the eye : it was for her purity she was 
 called that, and for her beauty : for there was 
 nothing in life with which she could be com- 
 pared beside it.' How beautiful this queenly 
 Emer, in girlhood and womanhood, and 
 beautiful the manner of her death beyond 
 that of any other, I think. And is there any 
 pathos of great love in sight of the House of 
 Sorrow greater than that renouncing bitterness 
 of Emer when she bids Cuchulain go with 
 Niamh, since he says that she only can save 
 him ? . . . ' And after that Emer bade Conall 
 to make a wide, very deep grave for Cuchulain : 
 and she laid herself down beside her gentle 
 comrade, and she put her mouth to his mouth, 
 and she said : " Love of my life, my friend, 
 my sweetheart, my one choice of the men of 
 the earth, many is the woman, wed or unwed, 
 envied me until to-day ; and now I will not 
 stay living after you." If there is any 
 loveliness of pathos beyond this loveliness, in 
 any literature, I do not know it. And the 
 last words of this saga, how fitting are they : 
 
 292 
 
' And her life went out from her, and she herself The Four 
 and Cuchulain were laid in the one grave by Conall. Winds of 
 And he raised the one stone over them, and he wrote Eirinn. 
 their names in Ogham, and he himself and all the 
 men of Ulster keened them. 
 
 'But the three times fifty queens that loved 
 Cuchulain saw him appear in his Druid chariot, going 
 through Emain Macha; and they could hear him 
 singing the music of the Sidhe.' 
 
 293 
 
THE SHADOWY WATERS' 
 
 ' I have flown out of the sorrowful 
 eary wheel.' PYTHAGORAS, The 
 olden Verses. 
 
 IT is hardly a decade since the rise of a new 
 Gaelic or Anglo-Celtic * school ' in literature 
 was looked at as the idle dream of an enthusiast 
 here, a visionary there. As for a Celtic Drama 
 a drama that would have nothing in common 
 with the accepted Irish melodrama so popular 
 in England, but would have everything in 
 common with the dreams of Irish poets and 
 the tragic history of Ireland ; a drama that 
 would not set itself to please through a facile 
 /laughter and an easy pathos, but through the 
 * magic of legendary associations and the spell 
 of a timeless imagination working within a 
 passionate nationalism of mind and spirit for 
 a Celtic drama such as this, there was not 
 even derision. The idea was too remote. 
 
 To ignore, now, the Anglo-Celtic school 
 I prefer to say the Anglo-Celtic group would 
 
 294 
 
be too parochial even for a London critic* The 
 trained in the narrowest academical and lite- Shadowy 
 rary conventions. One may ignore this O r Waters *' 
 that writer : all cannot be ignored, for they 
 are now many, and some have that distinction 
 which rebukes the sullen. One may deprecate 
 the movement, may decry it, may more in- 
 solently patronise it as some French critics 
 patronise Aubanel, Mistral, and the Proven9al 
 school, or as they patronise the poets and 
 romancists of the Breton people : but one can 
 no longer say it is not present, or is not to be 
 reckoned with. There are, of course, faults 
 on both sides. On each are wrong claims as 
 well as wrong refusals, wrong assertions as 
 well as wrong denials. In time, these adverse 
 influences will combine in understanding, and, 
 later, in sympathy and amity. If on the one 
 side there has been, and still is, obtuseness (to 
 speak of a sullen ill-will on the part of Eng- 
 land towards Gaelic Ireland and Gaelic Scot- 
 land is now untrue), there is on the other 
 a worse quality than obtuseness, a cultivated 
 hate. It is almost inconceivable to what 
 lengths this cult of revenge or hatred, this 
 blind irreconcilability, will go. Not only the 
 ignorant and idly passionate yield to its facile 
 contamination, but those who would be 
 spiritual guides and leaders pin to it all their 
 
 295 
 
' The hopes. These influences and blind advocates, 
 
 Shadowy o f course, must exist, so that out of evil 
 
 Waters. g OO( j mav come : but meanwhile they are the 
 
 subtlest foes of Ireland and of that whole 
 
 Anglo-Gaelic world which is now gathering 
 
 itself for a last effort to resist extinction. 
 
 At present, however, there is, of the Irish 
 group, one writer who stands apart. Whether 
 one care for or dispute ' the Celtic movement,' 
 none denies that Mr. Yeats is of the very few 
 writers of the younger generation who can 
 persuade us to the use of that sadly abused 
 word 'genius.' As essayist, romancist, dram- 
 atist, but above all as poet, he has a unique 
 place. 
 
 The colour of his style is the colour of his 
 thought, and the colour of his thought is the 
 colour of a genius larger than his own, the 
 genius of a race. 
 
 With the romances of 'The Secret Rose,' 
 the fantasies and episodes of 'The Celtic 
 Twilight,' or the several fascinating and sug- 
 gestive essays in which, I think, is to be found 
 Mr. Yeats's finest work in prose, I do not now 
 attempt to concern myself. Nor, indeed, do 
 I wish at present to consider his poetry as a 
 whole : for his work in verse is familiar to 
 most of us, and has been widely considered 
 by others. But I would say a few words 
 
 296 
 
concerning his latest book of verse, and his 'The 
 * Shadowy Waters ' and other dramatic work. Shadowy 
 In a small book of verse, 'The Wind Waters '' 
 among the Reeds/ recently given us by Mr. 
 Yeats, I think a note is touched which is 
 significant. It is the beginning of a new 
 music, and of a new motive. It is not often, 
 I imagine, that titles are so apt as that chosen 
 for this little book. These fewer than two- 
 score poems, most of them within the boundary 
 of a page, are small and slight as reeds ; and 
 the wind which moves in them a delicate 
 music is as invisible, as mysterious, as ele- 
 mental as that * strong creature, without flesh, 
 without bone, that neither sees nor is seen,' 
 of which long ago Taliesin sang. To under- 
 stand its intimate music, certainly to feel that 
 music translate itself into the rhythm of 
 dream, one must go to this book as to a 
 solitary place where reeds rise in the moon- 
 shine. To know intimately the mystery of 
 these solitudes, it must be when the wind is 
 the only traveller, and sunlight and shadow, 
 the stars and darkness and the wandering 
 plover are the sole visitants. How else is one 
 (though, indeed, the blind bird in the heart 
 must have sung the same song) to feel as 
 Hanrahan felt, with the curlew wailing over- 
 head and an old memory beating with 
 
 297 
 
'The bewildered wind against a sense of further 
 
 Shadowy sorrow yet to come : 
 Waters/ 
 
 ' O, Curlew, cry no more in the air, 
 Or only to waters in the West ; 
 Because your crying brings to ray mind 
 Passion-dimmed eyes and long heavy hair 
 That was shaken out over my breast ; 
 There is enough evil in the crying of wind.' 
 
 This little book has the remoteness, the 
 melancholy, of all poetry inspired by spiritual 
 passion. It has, too, that other melancholy 
 of which one of the subtlest of modern poets 
 wrote in a forgotten early tale : ' Les reves du 
 poete et de tamant reves qui,par une loi inex- 
 plicable de notre nature, ont toujours une teinte 
 de melancolie, meme dans leurs plus splendides 
 rayonnements, et qui ne sont les plus delicieux 
 des reves que grace a cette mme melancolie.' 
 Here we are aware of the stillness of things 
 that are past or are not again to be : 
 
 ' I bring you with reverent hands 
 The book of my numberless dreams ; 
 White woman that passion has worn 
 As the tide wears the dove-grey sands, 
 And with heart more old than the horn 
 That is brimmed from the pale fire of time, 
 White woman with numberless dreams, 
 I bring you my passionate rhyme.' 
 298 
 
This note of loss, of regret, finds constant c The 
 expression. Shadowy 
 
 Waters.' 
 
 ' I hear the shadowy Horses, their long manes a-shake, 
 Their hoofs heavy with tumult, their eyes glimmering 
 
 white ; 
 
 The North unfolds above them clinging, creeping night, 
 The East her hidden joy before the morning break, 
 The West weeps in pale dew, and sighs passing away, 
 The South is pouring down roses of crimson fire. 
 O vanity of Sleep, Hope, Dream, endless Desire, 
 The Horses of Disaster plunge in the heavy clay. 
 Beloved, let your eyes half close, and your heart beat 
 Over my heart, and your hair fall over my breast 
 Drowning love's lonely hour in deep twilight of rest, 
 And hiding their tossing manes and their tumultuous 
 
 feet/ 
 
 Mr. Yeats is assuredly of that small band 
 of poets and dreamers who write from no 
 other impulse than because they see and 
 dream in a reality so vivid that it is called 
 imagination. With him the imagination is in 
 truth the second-sight of the mind. Thus it 
 is that he lives with symbols, as unimaginative 
 natures live with facts. 
 
 Of his work might be said what in effect an 
 eminent critic said of Fra^ois Millet, that he 
 is so intent upon the expression of poetry that 
 sometimes he prefers his ideas to his material, 
 that sometimes he dematerialises his ideas, 
 
 299 
 
'The and suggests mystery instead of realising 
 
 Shadowy beauty. 
 
 Waters/ ^ symbolist stands in some danger here. 
 The obvious peril is a confusion of the spiritual 
 beauty behind the symbol with the arbitrary 
 expression of that spiritual beauty through 
 that particular symbol. There are blind alleys 
 and lost roads in symbolism, and few of those 
 who follow that loveliest trail into * the undis- 
 covered Edens ' of Beauty but sometimes lose 
 themselves, and go after shadows, and idly 
 name the stars, and inhabit planets with their 
 own desires, putting their vain dreams upon 
 these unheeding children of eternity. 
 
 Perhaps a truer wisdom is that which would 
 see the symbols in the facts, and the facts 
 translated from their material body to their 
 spiritual significance. It is the constant 
 reminder of the man who breaks stones to the 
 man who measures the stars, that he concerns 
 himself with remote speculations ; but the 
 star-gazer is also apt to forget that without 
 broken stones no road would be paven. And 
 I cannot but think that Mr. Yeats is a star- 
 gazer too reluctant to listen to the plaint of 
 those who break stones or are spiritually dumb 
 hewers of wood and drawers of water. He 
 does not always sing of things of beauty and 
 mystery as the things of beauty and mystery 
 
 300 
 
are best sung, so that the least may under- 'The 
 stand ; but rather as those priests of Isis who, Shadowy 
 when bidden to chant the Sun- Hymn to the Waters -' 
 people, sang, beautifully, incomprehensible 
 algebraical formulae. 
 
 ' The Powers whose name and shape no living creature 
 
 knows 
 
 Have pulled the Immortal Rose : 
 And though the Seven Lights bowed in their dance and 
 
 wept, 
 
 The Polar Dragon slept, 
 
 His heavy rings uncoiled from glimmering deep to deep : 
 When will he wake from sleep ? ' 
 
 Or, again : 
 
 ' We who still labour by the cromlech on the shore, 
 The grey cairn on the hill, when day sinks drowned in 
 
 dew, 
 
 Being weary of the world's empires, bow down to you, 
 Master of the still stars and of the flaming door.' 
 
 Or that strange poem of love with its fan- 
 tastic dream-beauty, beginning : 
 
 ' Do you not hear me calling, white deer with no horns ? 
 I have been changed to a hound with one red ear.' 
 
 To some there is no need to explain 'the 
 white deer with no horns,' 'the hound with 
 one red ear,' ' the boar without bristles, out 
 of the West ' : to some the symbols of the 
 ' Polar Dragon ' and the ' Immortal Rose ' 
 
 301 
 
'The stand evident. But these must be few : and 
 
 Shadowy though in a sense all excelling poetry is 
 
 waters. mystical, in the wider and not less true sense 
 
 it should be as water is, or as air is, or as 
 
 flame is. For it too is an elemental, being in 
 
 the spiritual life what wind is in the natural 
 
 life. 
 
 When the reader, unfamiliar with ' the 
 signature of symbol,' shall read these and 
 kindred lines, will he not feel that this new 
 priest of the Sun should translate to a more 
 human key his too transcendental vision ? 
 What, he will ask, is the Immortal Rose, and 
 what the Polar Dragon ? Who is the guardian 
 of the flaming door, and of what is it the 
 portal ? If a Gael, he may have heard of the 
 white fawn that is Love, of the white hound 
 that is Death. Is it this symbol that lives 
 anew in the hound with one red ear, in the 
 white deer without horns ? 
 
 For all who may not be able readily to 
 follow his honey of old wisdom, Mr. Yeats 
 has added notes. It would be more exact to 
 say that one-half of the book comprises the 
 prose equivalent of the verse. If all notes 
 afforded reading such as one may read here ! 
 Mr. Yeats turns round mentally and shows us 
 the other side, where the roots grow and the 
 fibres fill with sap, and how they grow to that 
 
 302 
 
blossom we have already seen, and what the 'The 
 sap is. In their kind, these notes have some- Shadowy 
 thing of the charm of the poems which they Waters - 
 illuminate. Yet they should be superfluous. 
 It is not their presence that one objects to, 
 but their need. Poetry is an art which should 
 be as rigorously aloof from the explicative as 
 the art of painting is, or as sculpture is, or 
 music. When Mr. Yeats gives us work on a 
 larger scale, with a greater sweep, he will, let 
 us hope, remember that every purely esoteric 
 symbol is a vague image and vagueness is 
 the inevitable defect against which the sym- 
 bolist has to contend. 
 
 But, when all is said that criticism is called 
 upon to say, what a lovely gift of music and 
 spiritual intensity and beauty is here. I have 
 an incalculable pleasure in this subtle magic 
 which creates so much loveliness out of a few 
 words. If, at times, the motive has triumphed 
 at the expense of the manner, it is rare that 
 music and meaning do not go in delectable 
 harmony. What lover of perfect verse but 
 could take keen pleasure in a little poem so 
 rose-like in its intricate symmetry as this : 
 
 ' Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths, 
 
 Enwrought with golden and silver light ; 
 The blue and the dim and the dark cloths 
 Of night and light and the half light ; 
 
 303 
 
' The * would spread the cloths under your feet ; 
 
 Shadowy ^ u * ^ being poor, have only my dreams ; 
 
 Waters.' I ^ ave spread my dreams under your feet, 
 
 Tread softly because you tread on my dreams/ 
 
 The nobler use of symbolism which is but 
 an analogue of the soul's speech gives a 
 strange spiritual intensity to these poems. 
 All do indeed live with an intense life, though 
 of conventional actuality they have little or 
 nothing. Some seem to be written in ac- 
 cordance with ' the magical tradition ' ; some 
 conform to the complex legend of Celtic 
 mythology ; some have no other shape or 
 aspect than their own, as they issued like 
 moths out of twilight, from the twilight of 
 the poetic imagination. All come 
 
 ' from a more dream-heavy land, 
 A more dream-heavy hour than this'; 
 
 and it is the infinite, because never wholly 
 to be overtaken, charm of these breaths 
 breaths of the reeds of the spirit shaken in 
 that wind which comes out of the past of time 
 and the past of the heart that, in them, we 
 too, as the poet himself, may hear "white 
 Beauty sighing.' In no descriptive sense, but 
 in a deeper sense, this book is one of a small 
 company that are pioneers in that intimate 
 return to nature from which we may and do 
 expect so profound and beautiful a revelation. 
 
 304 
 
For a few come with new vision, to reveal 'The 
 what is so old, what is younger than all else, Shadowy 
 and new always. Waters/ 
 
 It is a return, that in some sense, if only for 
 solace and strength, all of us who feel life 
 acutely must make. 
 
 I remember an old Highland fisherman say- 
 ing to me once, when asked if he thought God 
 could ever tire: 'I think He has the sea in 
 His right hand, and all the moors and hills of 
 the world in His left, and when He is tired o' 
 lookin' at the wickedness o' man, He washes 
 it out in the sea, an' then watches His mercy 
 like a soft shadow creepin' across the moors 
 an' hills.' I do not profess to give the exact 
 words, for the old islander spoke in Gaelic; 
 but this is the drift of them. * It 's all obair 
 an doill, the work of the blind,' he added 
 meaning the vanity of the human heart. And, 
 recalling this, I think that true poets and all 
 the silent kindred of poets must often seek 
 remote places, the loneliness of hill or moor, 
 must often listen to the desert wind, to the 
 whispering reeds, as a refuge from the dull 
 trouble of the habitual life ; that so they, too, 
 may take comfort from the stealing forth of 
 soft and kindly shadow symbol of natural 
 rest and spiritual re-birth. 
 
 A larger note is struck in * The Shadowy 
 
 u 305 
 
 tt* 
 
 
 
 OF THf 
 
 { UNIVEi 
 
'The Waters.' In this dramatic poem in this 
 
 Shadowy poetic vision, told in verse cast in a dramatic 
 Waters. f orm jyjr. Yeats has forsaken the acute 
 emotion become lyrical for the lyrical thought 
 become continuous. It is not a drama, be- 
 cause it is a symbolical reflection of what is in 
 the poet's mind, rather than the architectonic 
 revelation of what his imagination has defin- 
 itely shaped. It is not, strictly, a poetical 
 drama, even structurally, for action and speech 
 are subservient to the writer's entranced vision 
 of the symbolism of the action and of the 
 speech. It is one of those new and strange 
 utterances, so perplexing to many minds, 
 wherewith conventional methods are used for 
 novel, perturbing, sometimes bewildering, at 
 times bewildered, thought: one of those 
 dramas of the mind, best seen against ima- 
 gined tapestries, which reveal so much more 
 to us than do the common or familiar tapes- 
 tries, the dramas of the obvious, of merely 
 spectacular life. 
 
 I wonder how many who read this short 
 drama of a score pages understood straight- 
 way what they read? The personages are 
 mythical : even the famous name of Dectora 
 (or Dectera) does not indicate that lovely 
 queen with whose beauty old legend is fra- 
 grant: indeed, the poet has but taken the 
 
 306 
 
anglicised name of Cuchulain's mother and* The 
 given it to an imaginary crowned woman out Shadowy 
 of Lochlann. This Dechtire is not a king's Waters/ 
 bride seeking a new kingdom, but the symbol 
 or image of the Desire in the poet's heart, in 
 the hearts of poets. And Forgael, what is he ? 
 A Gaelic prince, weary of songs and women 
 and war, a lost king with a forgotten king- 
 dom? Yes, but more: is he not the inap- 
 peasable Ideal that calls to the Desire that is 
 in our heart; but, having won it, and led it 
 from shadowy lands across shadowy waters 
 till the grey wave is all that is left of the 
 visible world, will not lift it up nor wed it 
 unless it will relinquish its own flame unless, 
 in a word, the beautiful mortal shall put on 
 immortality, shall leave the warmth and the 
 dream for a perhaps too stellar radiance, a 
 certitude too divinely impassive ? 
 
 Many an one, besides Dectora, who has 
 relinquished all for the divine dream of im- 
 perishable and perfect love, has, at the last, 
 cried out in the extreme bitterness of a new 
 dismay : 
 
 ' Where are these bought ? Where are the holy woods 
 That can change love to imperishable fire ? 
 O ! I would break this net the gods have woven 
 Of voices and of dreams/ 
 
 It is the cry, not of Dectora only, but of all 
 
 307 
 
'The women, nay, of all who through dream and 
 
 Shadowy passion love to the extreme : 
 Waters/ 
 
 ( Beloved, 
 
 We will escape 
 
 The nets the gods have woven and our own hearts, 
 And will find out valleys and woods and meadows 
 To wander in ' ; 
 
 and it is the answer of that inexorable Ideal 
 which echoes in : 
 
 ' All that know love among the winds of the world 
 Have found it like the froth upon the ale.' 
 
 Not the plea of one shaken heart but of all 
 the troubled hearts of mortal love is uttered, 
 when Dectora suddenly cries passionately to 
 Forgael : 
 
 ' Love was not made for darkness and the winds 
 That blow when heaven and earth are withering, 
 For love is kind and happy. O come with me ! 
 Look on this body and this heavy hair ; 
 A stream has told me they are beautiful. 
 The gods hate happiness and weave their nets 
 Out of their hatred ' ; 
 
 and when her mysterious lover abruptly bids 
 her farewell, and tells her to seek Aibric, who 
 loves her also, and with him go back to her 
 lost and regretted land, it is not Forgael only 
 that speaks, but again that inexorable Ideal 
 which will not temporise, which offers but 
 wind and shadow and yet demands all that 
 
 308 
 
clinging hands and turning feet are loth to 'The 
 leave. And the tragic pity of that final word Shadowy 
 is, that it always comes too late for the man Waters - 
 or woman who would turn again to the beloved 
 and mortal : 
 
 ' I should wander 
 
 Amid the darkness, now that all my stars 
 Have fallen and my sun and moon gone out.' 
 
 Shall we have this visionary love, with its 
 terrible renunciations, or the light in loved 
 eyes, the touch of hands, the whisper in the 
 shadow ? Dectora is a woman and knows but 
 one love : 
 
 ' The love I know is hidden in these hands 
 That I would mix with yours, and in this hair 
 That I would shed like twilight over you/ 
 
 Forgael is not a man but a spirit, for to him 
 love is idle as the unfolding of a rainbow, the 
 colour of a moment on the grey eternities : 
 
 ' The love of all under the light of the sun 
 Is but brief longing, and deceiving hope, 
 And bodily tenderness ' ; 
 
 and he adds (alas, the cold radiance of precious 
 stones after the glow and flame of that little 
 infinite trouble in the dark, the human heart ') 
 
 e but love is made 
 
 Imperishable fire under the boughs 
 Of chrysoberyl and beryl and chrysolite 
 And chrysoprase and ruby and sardonyx.' 
 
 309 
 
' The It is lovely rhetoric, but the heart's silence is 
 
 Shadowy more eloquent. * The Shadowy Waters ' has 
 waters. a con tj nua l loveliness. Many lines dwell with 
 one : 
 
 e already 
 
 The cloudy waters and the glimmering winds 
 Have covered them/ 
 
 Many passages sink into the mind as dews 
 sink through the dusk : 
 
 ' The pale hound and the deer wander forever 
 Among the winds and waters ; and when they pass 
 The mountain of the gods, the unappeasable gods 
 Cover their faces with their hair and weep. 
 They lure us to the streams where the world ends '- 
 
 Or: 
 
 f Crumbled away 
 
 The grass and the blue shadow on the stream 
 And the pale blossom ' 
 
 < With a sound 
 
 I had woven of the sleep that is in pools, 
 Among great trees, and in the wings of owls ' 
 
 Or: 
 
 ' he who longs 
 
 For happier love but finds unhappiness, 
 And falls among the dreams the drowsy gods 
 Breathe on the burnished mirror of the world, 
 And then smooth out with ivory hands and sigh.' 
 
 In his symbolical and mythological allusions, 
 Mr. Yeats is again, as in ' The Wind among 
 the Reeds/ at times too esoteric, at times too 
 
 310 
 
vague. One may speak the tongue of angels, 'The 
 but the accent must be human and familiar. Shadowy 
 Nor will the critical reader be blind to the Waters *' 
 overuse of certain words : ' winds and waters,' 
 ' the pale hound,' * heart's desire,' and others, 
 come too readily from Mr. Yeats 's generally 
 so heedful art. Mannerism begets disillusion 
 when it becomes a common use, as when in 
 close conjunction Mr. Yeats thrice uses a 
 favourite, but at best dubious epithet, druid, 
 uses it as an adjective for ' mystic ' or kindred 
 word : ' a druid vapour/ ' druid moons,' ' with 
 druid apple- wood.' It has contagion, for a 
 day or two ago I saw in a paper an allusion 
 to 'the druid spell of Mr. Yeats's poetry, its 
 druid lights and shadows.' I can understand 
 a druid spell, though * druidic ' is the fit word : 
 but not druid lights and shadows. 
 
 * The Shadowy Waters ' does not yield all 
 its beauty at once. It is like that flower which 
 Moan, a dark queen of the Hidden People, 
 showed to Cuchulain in his madness : a flower 
 of a pale hue and faint fragrance, which every 
 day disclosed a richer hue, the colour of a 
 moment, or that loosed, passing as a moth's 
 wing, a new fragrance. It is the story of a 
 dream, of a symbolic vision ; but its enchant- 
 ment lies in its subtly beautiful interpretation 
 of a dream that is not of one mind but of many 
 
 3 11 
 
' The minds, of a vision that has not sustained one 
 
 Shadowy heart's desire only but the desire of many 
 Waters, hearts in the troubled congregation of men 
 and women. 
 
 The miscarriage which awaits the pioneer 
 lurks in the probable failure between theory 
 and fulfilment. Mr. Yeats has written care- 
 fully concerning dramatic ideals and the Celtic 
 Theatre : but he has not yet seemed explicit to 
 the reader eager to sympathise with both, nor 
 has his published dramatic work fulfilled the 
 desired end. Like so many of us, he mistakes 
 sometimes the gossamer drama woven inwardly 
 of the wind of the spirit and the light of the 
 imagination, for the tangible drama woven to 
 represent adequately the things of the imagina- 
 tion and the spirit. He thinks in light and 
 dreams in shadow, but forgets that the trans- 
 lation of these into thought made visible must 
 be as explicit as the translation of the wind's 
 cry on the wave or murmur among the leaves, 
 when through a formal and exact notation the 
 musician would convey the mystery of the 
 one and the troubled deeps of the other. 
 Hitherto, he has stood overmuch by the inner 
 sureties of the loom of thought : now, if he 
 has to achieve what he has in aim, he must 
 study the outward weaving of the web, the 
 external aspect of the woven dream, with not 
 
 312 
 
less careful heed, with careful, careful art. In 'The 
 6 The Land of Heart's Desire,' in Countess Shadowy 
 Cathleen,' in 'The Shadowy Waters,' he does Waters '' 
 not convince dramatically. In these he per- 
 suades. It may be the finer way for the 
 imagination : to persuade by the thing seen, 
 rather than by the thing shown. But it is 
 not the way accepted of Drama, which has 
 to be achieved by methods of illusion other 
 than those of cadence and colour. Mr. Yeats 
 seems to ignore that the particular method of 
 illusion demanded by the Drama necessitates 
 both an acceptance of certain conventions, 
 and an avoidance of certain scenic imaginative 
 realities inept as visible scenic actualities. 
 6 The Countess Cathleen ' ranks first in what 
 he has done in dramatic form, a play of great 
 beauty, and whose repeated public performance 
 delighted those who saw it. Yet it is impos- 
 sible not to feel that something is wanting. 
 This want is not of the obvious : we do not 
 mean that it should be longer or shorter, 
 swifter or slower, more humorous or more 
 tragic, more wrought in poetry or sustained 
 in prose. We take it as it is, and judge it 
 for its shape and colour, its own life, its spirit, 
 its aim. It is, then, that below the charm of 
 the verse we are aware of a lack. It is not 
 that the thought is slight, though it is not 
 
 313 
 
' The strenuous or deep ; or that the phrase is in- 
 
 Shadowy adequate in suggestion ; or that unrealities 
 Waters. wav e conflicting plumes among the ordered 
 march of the words, though insurgent unre- 
 alities there are at moments, and rebel insin- 
 cerities, unconscious traitors no doubt. But 
 something is lacking ; as in a still, breathless 
 wood we miss the lifting airs that are the wind. 
 And the wind whose airs Mr. Yeats does not 
 yet command is the wind of the dramatic 
 spirit. He does not think, shape, reveal 
 dramatically. This is as obvious in his dramatic 
 poems as in his tales. A dramatic conception 
 of an event or a linked sequence of events is 
 not enough : there must be a dramatic vision 
 of the coherent and actual congregation of 
 the symbols in which that conception is to 
 be made unique and visible : there must, 
 further, be that faculty of mental economy 
 which can use the few words only, the slight 
 detail, which can relinquish the literary idea 
 for the visible actuality : and there must be 
 the power to distinguish between the method 
 of illusion that lies with reverie and inward 
 vision, and the method of illusion that lies 
 with concentrated thought and its immediate 
 expression, with their demonstration in the 
 visible. 
 
 The flaw in Mr. Yeats's dramatic work seems 
 
to me to be just this, that he is not primarily 'The 
 a dramatist. That he can write a beautiful Shadowy 
 dramatic poem is evident in 'The Shadowy Waters -' 
 Waters ' : that he can write a beautiful poetic 
 drama is evident in ' The Countess Cathleen ' : 
 that he can transmute into dramatic form 
 the essential spirit of poetry is evident in 
 ' The Land of Heart's Desire.' But these are 
 not dramas in the sense that they are the 
 outward and actual representation, through 
 men and women and the actual world, of the 
 dreams and thoughts and ideas of which men 
 and women and the actual world are the 
 shadows and vivid phantoms. It is not the 
 visible, the dramatic interpretation that Mr. 
 Yeats gives us, but the woven shape and 
 colour of his dreams. * The Shadowy Waters ' 
 is a vision related as a dramatic poem : it 
 could have been related in dramatic prose, or 
 in the continuous linked prose of reverie, or in 
 the deftly entangled prose of dialogue, or in 
 the mirroring lucidities of the prose of narrative. 
 We are glad of it as it stands : we may con- 
 sider that it could not appeal to us more finely 
 in another form. But it has not inevitableness. 
 Even in the one drama more nearly suited for 
 external representation which Mr. Yeats has 
 written, there are spiritual truths, symbols, 
 images which are as foreign voices crying for 
 
 315 
 
' The interpretation : images, symbols, and truths 
 
 Shadowy which, in their reality to him, he has forgotten 
 
 Waters.' are? |- o others, unrelated voices, wandering 
 
 shapes, the idle loveliness of stars falling from 
 
 abyss to abyss. 
 
 And yet since I have re-read ' The 
 Shadowy Waters' I believe that Mr. Yeats 
 may give us, may at least lead us towards 
 a signal compromise that shall be almost 
 a new art; a new art perhaps. He may 
 find the way where the dreaming spirit and 
 the shaping mind are not two companions 
 but one traveller : he may stoop by a well we 
 have not seen, and hear the forgotten voice of 
 Connla, and out of old wisdom fashion newly 
 a new thing. In words already quoted, 
 
 dramas of the mind there are, 
 Best seen against imagined tapestries, 
 
 and it may well be that, in a day of outworn 
 conventions, many of us may turn gladly from 
 the scenic illusions of the stage-carpenter, and 
 the palpable illusions of the playwright, to the 
 ever-new illusions of the dreaming mind, woven 
 in a new intense dramatic reality against 
 ' imagined tapestries ' as real, and as near, as 
 the crude symbols of painted boards and 
 stereotyped phrase in which we still have a 
 receding pleasure. 
 
 316 
 
NOTE 
 
 This essay was published before 
 the issue of Mr. Yeats' s recent 
 dramatic ventures, ' The King's 
 Threshold/ < On Baile's Strand,' 
 and other short Irish dramas of 
 old and of to-day, of unchanging 
 Ireland. My commentary on his 
 work must be read as applying to 
 what, at the time of its writing, 
 Mr. Yeats had published. 
 
STRANGER. 'And what help can there 
 be from one who sees not? ' 
 
 (EDIPUS. 'In all that I speak there 
 shall be sight.' (Edipus at Kolonos. 
 
 ' But . . . have you asked for that 
 teaching through which the unheard is 
 heard, the unthought is thought, the 
 unknown is known?' The Chandogya 
 Upanishad, vi. 
 
A TRIAD 
 
 IN the thirty-second Triad of the ' Mystery of 
 the Bards ' it is said that when the soul inherits 
 Gwynnfyd, that is to say, Happiness, three 
 supreme gifts once, long ago, its crown, but 
 long, long ago, lost will be restored to it. 
 And these three things are, we are told in this 
 Triad, primitive genius, primitive love, and 
 primitive memory. 
 
 No doubt there have been many interpreta- 
 tions of these triads. It is not easy to say of 
 one quality what it is ; nor what another may 
 stand for ; nor what the third may indicate. 
 What is meant by genius, and what by primi- 
 tive genius ? And what love is primitive love, 
 and between whom, and at what altar lit, and 
 under what star a creature of joyous or malign 
 life ? And what is primitive memory, and of 
 what is it the energy ; of the mind, called into 
 brief life, like a match lit in the wind ; or of 
 the racial spirit, that lives upon the nerves as 
 
A Triad, the aerial spirits of old legend live upon the 
 beauty and fragrance of flowers and grasses ; 
 or of the soul, that has so much to recollect 
 in its single transient passage before it can 
 gather again the sound and colour of its earlier 
 migrations, and so far to travel along this dim 
 road of vicissitude before it can meet the 
 shining brows of the forgotten children of 
 beauty and wonder, who were with us, once ? 
 
 In the ' Roman de Merlin,' when that son 
 of earth and fire is wooed in spiritual ecstasy 
 by the mysterious Radiance, this Triad is 
 recalled in the words : ' J'eclaire la partie 
 immortelle de ton ame . . . je serai ta Force, 
 ta Muse, et ton Genie.' 
 
 But I think the unknown Druid meant 
 more than this. I think more is meant than 
 an original possessing spirit, a daemon or 
 genius ; than a first love, burning with the 
 white flame of purity and inspiration ; than a 
 divinity born of the passion that desires and 
 the will that achieves. 
 
 For I think that nowhere, in any age, in 
 any faith, is there a finer spiritual promise 
 than what this Triad holds. If we be sure of 
 these things, we need not trouble about any 
 other. To remember, with the remembrance 
 of the soul; to love, in the ecstasy of the 
 morning of the world ; to enter into the genius 
 
 320 
 
of the earth, to be at one with every breath of A Triad, 
 life, to share every separate rapture; to see 
 thought like flame, and life like clear water, 
 and death like the shifting shadows of clouds ; 
 to be an eddy in that clear, swift flowing 
 water ; to be a flame of thought, shaken like 
 a plume of fire before the mirrors of a myriad 
 minds, or to descend like fiery snow into their 
 hills and valleys and yet never to be lost, 
 never to be drowned in light or fire, eternally 
 errant yet ever at the call of the Herdsman 
 that, indeed, is to live back into the life that 
 was, and to live on into the life that is. 
 
 To be possessed by primitive genius. That 
 would be to arise each morning with the 
 wonder of a child awaking, for the first time, 
 by the sea, or among great mountains, or in a 
 forest roofed with wandering cloud and in- 
 habited by a whispering wind. It would be 
 to arise, too, with the heart of a woman sud- 
 denly knowing all things because of her shaken 
 heart. It would be to arise with the spirit of 
 youth, proud as a young eagle staring across 
 the dominions of the sun or upon the green 
 lands and grey seas far below. It would be 
 to arise with the thrill and longing of the poet, 
 with the ecstasy of the seer, with the uplifted 
 silence of the visionary. It would be to arise 
 with the instinctive gladness of every child of 
 
 x 321 
 
A Triad, the bushes, of every little one of the grass ; of 
 the salmon leaping in the sunlit linn ; of the 
 swallow and the wild bee, of the lark in the 
 blue pastures of the air. Do not the creatures 
 of an hour rejoice in wheeling their grey 
 mazes in the green shadows of boughs ? It 
 would be to share the rapture. We have 
 forgotten that; we have forgotten rapture. 
 The communion of life ! To breathe once 
 more in a common joy ! To feel the brother- 
 hood of life, from the blossom on the bough 
 to the grey silence of old hills ; from the least 
 of the blind offspring of the earth to the 
 greatest of the winged children of the four 
 winds ; from the wild lives that lurk and are 
 afraid to the fearless lives that openly rejoice ; 
 from the stilled lives that do not move, the 
 hill-rock and the sea-caverned coral, to the 
 wild swan of the arctic wave or the swallows 
 that with white breast and purple wing thrid 
 an ever-moving maze from the Hebrid Isles 
 to where the Nile narrows in tufted reed and 
 floating nenuphar. To feel thus, with the 
 thrill of conscious oneness, rejoicingly; as 
 children of one mother, nestlings of one brood; 
 and, thus feeling, to perceive and be at one 
 with the secret springs of the inward life, in 
 caverned thought and image-building dream, 
 and of the life made visible in motion, colour, 
 
 322 
 
and form this would be to know the primitive A Triad, 
 genius, to be possessed by it, to be of the 
 genii of the morning. 
 
 But without love, rapture would be a cold 
 flame. Lovely are the fires of the sea, and 
 lovelier the fainting opal and pale rose of the 
 shaken aurora ; but the red warmth of a 
 hearth-side is even more near to the soul as 
 well as dearer to the body. This is an old 
 wisdom, indeed, but the Druid of the Triad 
 had thought and dreamed deeply before he 
 placed this white greatness of love second in 
 the trinity of the beatitudes. It was not of 
 the commoner loves he dreamed ; but of love. 
 The cushat loves his mate of the cedar branch 
 and the greenness, and the wolf leaping in the 
 starlight answers the howl of the she-wolf, 
 and even the scattered clan of the lapwing 
 and the seamew have their faithful com- 
 panionships by the moor-orchis and where the 
 wrack-flower swims. But these are loves, not 
 love. It is so great a thing that the wings of 
 sunrise and sunset do not enclose it, and the 
 stars are eddies of dust behind its feet ; and 
 yet this immortal can be claspt between the 
 shaken flames of two hearts, and meshed in the 
 subtle nets of dreams. It has many raiments, 
 many faces. The mother bends low and 
 kisses it, the friend clasps its hand, husband 
 
 3 2 3 
 
 
A Triad, and wife uplift it, lovers worship it, the just 
 uphold it, great minds and deep natures 
 breathe it as a common air, the pure of heart 
 inhabit it. And, of old, it was even now as 
 with the pure of heart. It was a habitation. 
 The soul dwelled in it, as light in water, as 
 rhythm in light, as vibration in sound. Primi- 
 tive genius beheld the world in wonder; when 
 it was wedded to primitive love, it looked 
 through the rainbow of a new passion and a 
 new joy, and knew that beyond the rapture of 
 things seen with the eye was the throbbing 
 world of things not seen but known, of things 
 not held but felt, of things not measured in 
 surety but treasured in hope. With love, 
 coming to one and all with each new dawn as 
 wind and light come, the heavens were opened 
 and the world stood disclosed in a new beauty. 
 To the enchantment had come music. 
 
 To recapture these primitive genius, 
 primitive love ! Might not the Druid of 
 yesterday or to-day think there was no 
 further crown for the rejoicing spirit ? And 
 yet, assuredly, it was from the unplumbed 
 depth of knowledge which we call intuition 
 that the seer of the Triad placed primitive 
 memory as the third and chief of the stars 
 in the spiritual crown. For Genius, which 
 is the rejoicing spirit of the world, could not 
 
 324 
 
see beyond its own radiance of life ; and A Triad. 
 Love, which is at once the little shaken flame 
 in a single heart and the shoreless fire of 
 immortality, could not with its mortal eyes 
 see beyond death; but Memory mother of 
 all art, overlord of destiny, the Word of 
 humanity she sits apart. She looks down 
 upon the whirling of the wheels of chance 
 and the dust of empires ; she remembers the 
 Sons of the Morning ; she holds the clues of 
 all interpretation. Sitting at the throne of 
 Life, she has seen the passage of the divine 
 multitude; many gods have gone by her; 
 she has stood by the starry graves of great 
 deities. Like love, she is an Eternal, and 
 incommensurable, and yet can whisper in a 
 sleeper's ear or lie tranced in a dreamer's 
 mind. She has all songs on her lips, all 
 music in the touch of her hands, all desires in 
 her eyes, all hopes in her breath, all joys and 
 all sorrows, all faiths and all despairs. It is 
 she who gives joy to genius, and a pulse to 
 love ; she knows the secret roads ; wisdom is 
 the star upon her brows. 
 
 Primitive genius, primitive love, primitive 
 memory; what are these phantoms of the 
 dreaming mind ? 
 
 So will many say. For, they will add, 
 where, in any age, in any record of any age, 
 
 325 
 
A Triad, in any dream, even, of the estates of man, did 
 the soul rejoice in this genius, travail in this 
 sacred love, crown itself as a god with this 
 diadem of omniscient light ? 
 
 I do not know. I have not read of any. 
 But I think the soul knows. I think the soul 
 remembers. I think that intuition is divine 
 and unshakable. I think, if we can fill the 
 ruined palaces of the mind with the wind of 
 immortality and the light of the eternal not 
 forgetting that the symbol is but the shadow 
 of the reality, and that into no symbol can 
 the inconceivable be translated that we may 
 doubt these unstable temples served by blind 
 votaries rather than the spirit which Eternity 
 breathes and Immortality bestows. 
 
 I think we have travelled a long way, and 
 have forgotten much, and continually forget 
 more and more. The secret road of the soul 
 is a long road. When, at last, we turn, 
 looking backward so as at last to go forward, 
 we shall see a long way off the forsaken 
 homes of joy, and above these our inheritance 
 behold the stars of our spiritual youth. 
 
 326 
 
The Ancient Beauty 
 
THE ANCIENT BEAUTY 
 
 * Sogna, sogna, mia cara anima ! Tutto 
 Tutto sara come al tempo lontano.' 
 Poema Paraditaco. 
 
 LITTLE girl, when you grow to maidhood 
 and womanhood, it is a hope of mine that you 
 will love these old legendary tales, of which 
 the tale of D&rdre and the Sons of Usna is 
 one. Before you read this time-sweet story 
 of great love you will come to the story of 
 Fionnula and her brothers, because the Tale 
 of the Children of Lir, or the Tale of the 
 Four Swans as it is sometimes called, is first 
 among the old beautiful stories for the delight 
 of those standing in or passing beyond child- 
 hood. For a thousand years Gaelic youth 
 has loved and wept over it. By many fires, 
 by lonely seas, in hill-glens ... in the great 
 straths where of old was no change but the 
 
 Dedicatory introduction for an American reprint of my 
 versions of the old Gaelic tales of Deirdre and the Sons of Usna 
 and The Children of Lir. 
 
 329 
 
The changing colour of season following season 
 
 Ancient an( j w here no strangers came save birth and 
 death, but where the deer now have their 
 wilderness or vast flocks browse where the 
 smoke of crofts and homesteads rose . . . 
 from generation to generation children, and 
 maids and youths keeping children's hearts, 
 have had their lives deepened in love and 
 devotion, because of this tale of endurance 
 noble to the end, and of patience so great that 
 the heart aches at the thought of it. You 
 will hear much of the other virtues, dear : 
 but do not forget these, which are so great, 
 the stars of Christ . . . endurance and 
 patience. It may help you to remember if 
 you read of them in verse, as has been 
 written in beauty : 
 
 ' Endurance is the noblest quality 
 And Patience all the passion of great hearts.' 
 
 But, when you are older, I think there will 
 be no tale on the high lift of love, of heroic 
 love, to move you more than that now retold 
 for you here, out of the dim beautiful past 
 whose shadows sleep, in lengthening fans 
 of twilight, across the sunset-lands of the 
 imagination. 
 
 In all the regions of the Gael throughout 
 Scotland, and in every isle, from Arran and 
 
 330 
 
Islay in the south to lona in the west and The 
 Tiree in mid-sea and the Outer Hebrides, Ancient 
 there is no story of the old far-off days so Beaut y- 
 well known as that of Deirdre. In some 
 places she is called Darthool, or Dartuil, or 
 Darthray, or Darrathray (the last I have 
 heard once only), but Deirdre is the one 
 name common to all the Gaels; and in 
 Ireland to this day there is not a cowherd 
 who has not heard of that queenly name. 
 
 Her beauty filled the old world of the Gael 
 with a sweet, wonderful, and abiding rumour. 
 The name of Deirdre has been as a lamp to 
 a thousand poets. In a land of heroes and 
 brave and beautiful women, how shall one 
 name survive ? Yet to this day and for ever, 
 men will remember Deirdre, the torch of 
 men's thoughts, and Grainne whom Diarmid 
 loved and died for, and Maev who ruled 
 mightily, and Fand whose white feet trod 
 faery dew, and many another. For Beauty 
 is the most unforgettable thing in the world, 
 and though of it a few perish, and the myriad 
 dies unknowing and uncaring, beneath it the 
 nations of men move as beneath their pilgrim 
 star. Therefore he who adds to the beauty 
 of the world is of the sons of God. He who 
 destroys or debases beauty is of the darkness, 
 and shall have darkness for his reward. 
 
The The day will come when you will find a 
 
 Ancient subtle enchantment in these names. They 
 Beauty. w jjj \^ r [ n g vou a j ost mus i C) a l os t world, and 
 
 imperishable beauty. You will dwell with 
 them, till you love Deirdre as did the sons of 
 Usna, and would die for her, or live to see 
 her starry eyes ; till you look longingly upon 
 the Grainne of your dreams, and cry as 
 Diarmid did, when he asked her, as death 
 menaced them, if even yet she would go 
 back, and she answered that she would not : 
 ' Then go forward, O Grainne ! ' 
 
 Empires become drifted sand, and the 
 queens of great loveliness are dust on the 
 wind. They shall not come again, towered 
 cities of sand, palaces built upon the sea, 
 roses of beauty that blossomed for an hour 
 on the wind that is ever silently and swiftly 
 moving out of darkness and turning a sunlit 
 wing and then silently and swiftly moving 
 into darkness again. But the wind is change- 
 less in divine continual advent, and the sun- 
 lit wing is that immortal radiance we call 
 Beauty, which we see as the mirage hung 
 upon the brows of Life. In that mirage 
 Death is but a beautiful phantom walking 
 among rainbows and white flowers ; and the 
 poets of the world who have ever been in 
 love with Love and Death, which in the deep 
 
 332 
 
sense are one look into that lovely mystery The 
 and see again the towers and palaces of white Ancient 
 nameless cities, and hear the rejoicing of flutes Beau *y- 
 and clarions, and see banners upon the wind 
 and armies marching, and the loveliness of 
 great queens of beauty, and gather dreams 
 and inspiration there, and come again and 
 bow down before the eternal Phantom in the 
 heart of all of us. 
 
 For wisdom reneweth herself in beauty. 
 
 It will not suffice that you care for these 
 beautiful old tales as one cares for a flower 
 that one plucks by the wayside, that one 
 gathers at whim and idly discards. It will 
 not suffice to like them as we like something 
 which amuses us for a moment, a fantasy at a 
 theatre, a light air lightly played or a song 
 lifting itself from twilights of silence, this 
 painted idyll of what was never was, this 
 facile romance of the obvious or the impos- 
 sible. These are things of pleasantry, and are 
 good, or may be good, each in its kind : but 
 they are not the things of the heart's desire, 
 nor images of what the soul longs for and 
 thirsts for. 
 
 But will you find anything of that which 
 the soul longs for and thirsts for, will you find 
 any unshaken or wavering image of your 
 heart's desire, in the telling of an old tale? 
 
 333 
 
The Many will ask that; some incredulously, 
 
 Ancient some scornfully, some indifferently. 
 Beauty. Perhaps. Perhaps not. It is of least 
 
 moment what is in the tale : it is of moment 
 what atmosphere of ideal beauty has remained 
 with it out of the mind of the dreamer who 
 shaped it, out of the love of generations for 
 whom it has been full of a perpetual sweet 
 newness as of summer-dawn, for whom it has 
 been as fresh as moon- dew glistering on banks 
 of thyme along old grassy ways. And it is of 
 supreme moment what we ourselves bring : 
 what every reader who would know the 
 enchantment must bring, what you, dear, if 
 you would know the enchantment, must 
 bring. 
 
 Let me for a moment tell you something 
 that bears upon what I say. Long ago, one 
 of the old forgotten gods, the god of enchant- 
 ment and illusion, made a glory of loveliness, 
 a glory of sound, and a glory of delight. 
 Then he watched seven mortals approach in 
 turn. Three saw in it no loveliness, heard 
 in it no ecstasy, caught from it no rapture. 
 Of three others, one knew an inexplicable 
 delight, and took away the wonder and the 
 memory to be his while he lived : and one 
 heard an ecstasy of sound, and went away 
 rapt, and forgetting all things because of that 
 
 334 
 
dream and passion not seen but heard : and The 
 the third looked on that loveliness, and ever Ancient 
 after his fellows spoke of him as one made Beauty, 
 insane by impossible dreams, though he had 
 that in his life which rose in a white flame, 
 and quenched his thirst at wells of the spirit, 
 and rejoiced continually. But of the seven 
 one only saw the glory as the god of enchant- 
 ment and illusion had made it, seeing in it 
 the spirit that is Beauty, and hearing in it the 
 soul of Music, and uplifted by it to the 
 rapture that is the passion of delight. And 
 lest that evil Destiny which puts dust upon 
 dreams, and silence upon sweet airs, and still 
 songs, and makes the hand idle, and the 
 mind an eddying leaf, and the spirit as foam 
 upon the sea, should take from this dreamer 
 what he had won, the god of enchantment 
 and illusion gave the man a broken heart, and 
 a mind filled with the sighing of weariness, 
 and sorrow to be his secret friend and the 
 silence upon his pillow by night. 
 
 I have told you this to help you to under- 
 stand that it is what we bring to the en- 
 chantment that matters more than what 
 the enchantment may disclose. And, when 
 you have been kissed by sorrow may the 
 darker veiled Dread pass you, dear you will 
 understand why the seventh dreamer who 
 
 335 
 
The looked upon the secret wonder was of the 
 
 Ancient few whom the gods touch with the hands, 
 Beauty. Q f ^ chosen keepers and guardians of the 
 immortal fire. 
 
 No, it will not suffice that you care for 
 them as a flower plucked by the wayside, as 
 a pleasure gathered in idleness, to be forgotten 
 when gathered. You must come to these old 
 tales to seek and to find the surviving beauty 
 of gathered dreams and a silent world, the 
 immortality of ideals treasured once, forgotten 
 now. I do not say, I would not have you 
 believe, for I do not so think, that all the old 
 ideals of beauty have stolen away from the 
 world, as twilight retreats from the grass in 
 the pale greenness of dawns. But some have 
 gone, or are changed, and we do not know 
 them : and some have dimmed. And, at least 
 I think so, some are so rare now as to be seen 
 only in a few hearts, like the star in a woodland 
 pool seen among slim spears of reed. One 
 does not look into many enchanted hearts in 
 that uncertain wandering of ours between the 
 lighting and the ashes of the brief fire which 
 we come to unknowingly, and carelessly tend, 
 and regret with unavailing tears, and leave, 
 cold. And I ... I shall have bent above 
 the fading warmth, and have risen at last, cold, 
 and gone away, when that little wondering 
 
 336 
 
heart of yours shall have become a woman's The 
 heart : and so I do not know whether, if I Ancient 
 were to look in it, I should see beyond the Beau y - 
 shaken reeds of the mind the depth-held 
 star of the old passion of beauty, the old long- 
 ing, the old enchantment. But I hope so. 
 
 And so, if, carrying a heart such as I hope 
 
 for you and believe is yours, little one, you 
 
 will bring with you the enchanted secret, the 
 
 enchantment in your mind, and look into that 
 
 dim, beautiful enchantment of the past of a 
 
 world that ended, that changed long ago, and 
 
 whose light endures as the travelling light of 
 
 a star may immeasurably survive the star 
 
 I know you will find a compelling beauty in 
 
 these old tales of the Gael, a beauty of thought 
 
 against which to lay your thought, a beauty 
 
 of dream against which to lay your dream, a 
 
 beauty of desire against which to lay your 
 
 desire. For they are more than tales of 
 
 beauty, than tales of wonder. They are the 
 
 dreams of the enchanted spirit of man, achieved 
 
 in beauty. Shall the day come when the tale 
 
 of Deirdre shall be no more told, when in the 
 
 firelight moist eyes shall not deepen at the 
 
 sorrows of Fionnula and her swan-brothers, 
 
 when men's hearts and women's hearts shall 
 
 not be quickened by the tale of Ailinn and 
 
 Baile Honeymouth, when the madness of 
 
 Y 337 
 
The Cuchulain shall not trouble, when the love of 
 
 Ancient Emer shall not be the very fragrance of great 
 Beauty. love, when the song of Niamh shall not 
 enchant ? 
 
 If so, it is not merely beautiful children of 
 legend we shall lose, not the lovely raiment, 
 but the very beauty and love themselves, the 
 love of beauty, the love of love, the old 
 wondering ecstasy, the lost upliftedness, which 
 once were an ancestral possession in an old, 
 simple, primitive way, and now, or in that way, 
 are no more ours, but are changed for us, as 
 rainbows are changed upon the brows of cloud. 
 So, little one, come in time to love these 
 things of beauty. Lay your child's heart 
 that is made of morning joy and evening 
 longing to that mother-heart : and when you 
 gather years, as now you gather the little 
 white clan of the grass, it shall be well with 
 you. And you, too, when your time is come, 
 and you in turn pass on the mystery of life to 
 another who will look up from your breast 
 with eyes of still wonder and slowly shaping 
 thought, forget not to tell that other to lay 
 its child's heart of morning joy and evening 
 longing against a more ancient and dream- 
 filled heart than that of any woman, that 
 mother-heart of which I speak to you, the 
 Heart of Beauty. 
 
 338 
 
The Winged Destiny 
 
THE WINGED DESTINY 
 
 IN tragic drama it is authenticity of emotion 
 and not authenticity of episode that matters. 
 It is of lesser moment whether the theme be 
 imaginary, or historically of this country or 
 of that, or of this age or of another age. What 
 does matter is the veritable action of the 
 elemental emotions, and primarily the emotion 
 of the inevitableness of destiny and the emotion 
 of tragical loveliness. One does not need to 
 know the Scandinavian story of Gunhild, or 
 the Arthurian story of Tristran and Yseult, 
 or the Gaelic story of Deirdre* and the Sons 
 of Usna, in order to know the mystery and 
 the silent arrivals of destiny, or to know the 
 emotion of sorrow at the passage of beauty. 
 These emotions are not the properties of 
 drama, which is but a fowler snaring them in 
 a net. These deep elementals are the obscure 
 
The chorus which plays upon the silent flutes, 
 
 Winged upon the nerves wherein the soul sits enmeshed. 
 Destiny. They have their own savage or divine energy, 
 and the man of the woods and the dark girl 
 of the canebrakes know them with the same 
 bowed suspense or uplifted lamentation or joy 
 as do the men and women who have great 
 names and to whom the lords of the imagina- 
 tion have given immortality. 
 
 Many kings have desired, and the gods 
 forbidden. Concobar has but lain down where 
 Cgesars have fallen and Pharaohs closed imperial 
 eyes, and many satraps and many tyrants have 
 bent before the wind. All old men who in 
 strength and passion rise up against the bitter- 
 ness of destiny are the kindred of Lear : those 
 who have kept love as the crown of years, and 
 seen it go from them like a wreath of sand, 
 are of the kin of Concobar. There is not 
 one Lear only, or one Concobar, in the vast 
 stage of life : but a multitude of men who 
 ask, in the dark hour of the Winged Destiny, 
 Am I in truth a king ? or who, incredulous, 
 whisper Love is dead, Love the immortal is 
 dead ! 
 
 The tradition of accursed families is not the 
 fantasy of one dramatist or of one country or 
 of one time. The Oresteia of Aischylos is no 
 more than a tragic fugue wherein one hears 
 
 342 
 
the cries of uncountable threnodies. The The 
 doom of the clan of Usna is not less veiled Winged 
 in terror and perpetuated in fatality than Destm y* 
 the doom of the Atredai: and even "The 
 Fall of the House of Ussher ' is but a single 
 note of the same ancient mystery over which 
 Sophocles brooded in the lamentations which 
 eddy like mournful winds around the House 
 of Labdacus. 
 
 Whether the poet turn to the tragedy of 
 the Theban dynasty, wherein Laios and 
 lokaste and Oidipus move like children of 
 fire in a wood doomed to flame; or to the 
 tragedy of the Achaian dynasty, wherein 
 Pelops and Atreus, Agamemnon and Mene- 
 laos, Helen and Iphigeneia, Klytaimnestra pro- 
 phesying and the prophet Kalchas, are like 
 shadowy figures, crowned with terror and 
 beauty, on the verge of a dark sea where the 
 menace of an obscure wind is continually 
 heard beyond the enchanted shore ; or to the 
 tragedy of Lear weeping, where all kingship 
 seems as a crown left in the desert to become 
 the spoil of the adder or a pillow for wander- 
 ing dust; or to the Celtic tragedy of the 
 House of Fionn, where Dermid and Grania, 
 where Oisin and Malveen, are like the winds 
 and the waters, the rains and the lamentations 
 of the hills : or to that other and less familiar 
 
 343 
 
The Gaelic tragedy, where an old king knows mad- 
 
 Winged ne ss because of garnered love spilt and wasted, 
 Destiny. an( j w j iere a i anl p o f deathless beauty shines 
 like a beacon, and where heroes die as leaves 
 fall, and where a wind of prophesying is like 
 the sound of dark birds flying over dark trees 
 in the darkness of forgotten woods whether 
 one turn to these, or to the doom of the 
 House of Malatesta, or to the doom of the 
 House of Macbeth, or to the doom of the 
 House of Ravenswood, one turns in vain if 
 he be blind and deaf to the same elemental 
 forces as they move through the blood that 
 has to-day's warmth in it, that are the same 
 powers, though they be known of the obscure 
 and the silent, and are committed like wander- 
 ing flame to the torch of a ballad as well as to 
 the starry march of the compelling words of 
 genius ; are of the same dominion, though that 
 be in the shaken hearts of islesfolk and moun- 
 taineers, and not with kings in Myknai, or 
 by the thrones of Tamburlaine and Aurung- 
 zebe, or with great lords and broken nobles 
 and thanes. 
 
 The poet, the dramatist, is not able is not 
 yet able to express in beauty and convey in 
 symbol the visible energy of these emotions 
 without resort to the artifice of men and 
 women set in array, with harmonious and 
 
 344 
 
arbitrary speech given to them, and a back- The 
 ground of illusion made unreal by being made Winged 
 emphatic. Destinv - 
 
 If one were to express the passion of re- 
 morse under the signal of a Voice lamenting, 
 or the passion of tears under the signal of a 
 Cry, and be content to give no name to these 
 protagonists and to deny them the background 
 of history or legend : and were to unite them 
 in the sequence of significant and essential 
 things which is drama in action, but in a 
 sequence of suggestion and symbol rather 
 than of statement and pageant : he would be 
 told that he had mistaken the method of 
 lyrical music passing into musical drama for 
 the method of verbal emotion passing into 
 poetic drama. But that is too subtle a dream 
 for realisation to seem possible yet, save for 
 those who, hungering after the wild honey of 
 the mind and thirsting for the remoter springs, 
 foresee a time when the imagination shall lay 
 aside words and pigments and clay, as raiment 
 needless during the festivals of the spirit, and 
 express itself in the thoughts which inhabit 
 words as light inhabits water or as greenness 
 inhabits grass. 
 
 But so long as the imagination dwells in 
 the accepted convention that imposes upon 
 us the use of events which chime to the bells 
 
 345 
 
The of the past, and the use of names which are at 
 
 Winged O nce congruous and traditional ... in this 
 Destiny, convention of episode and phrase in the con- 
 cert of action and suspense ... it will be 
 well ever and again to turn to those ancestral 
 themes of destiny past which so many genera- 
 tions have slipt like sea -going winds over 
 pastures, and upon which the thoughts of 
 many minds have fallen in secret dews. I do 
 not say, for I do not so think, that there might 
 not be drama as moving whether it deal with 
 the event of to-day and the accent of the hour 
 as with a remote accent recovered and with 
 remote event. But, to many minds, there 
 must always be a supreme attraction in great 
 themes of the drama of destiny as familiar to 
 us as the tales of faerie and wonder to the 
 mind of childhood. The mind, however, need 
 not be bondager to formal tradition. I know 
 one who can evoke modern dramatic scenes 
 by the mere iterance of the great musical 
 names of the imagination. . . . Menelaos, 
 Helen,Klytaimnestra,Andromache,Kassandra, 
 Orestes, Blind Oidipus, Elektra, Kreusa, and 
 the like. This is not because these names are 
 in themselves esoteric symbols, or are built of 
 letters of revelation as the fabled tower of Ys 
 was built of evocatory letters made of wind 
 and water, of brownness of earth, of greenness 
 
 346 
 
of grass, and of dew, all of which the druids The 
 held in the hollows of the five vowels. And Winged 
 here, he says, is his delight. ' For I do not Destin y- 
 live only in the past, but in the present, in 
 these dramas of the mind. The names stand 
 for the elemental passions, and I can come to 
 them through my own gates of to-day as well 
 as through the ancient portals of Aischylos or 
 Sophocles or Euripides : and for background 
 I prefer the flame-light and the sound of the 
 wind to any of the crude illusions of stage- 
 craft.' 
 
 It is no doubt in this attitude that Racine, 
 so French in the accent of his classical genius, 
 looked at the old drama which was his inspira- 
 tion ; that Mr. Swinburne and Mr. Bridges, so 
 English in the accent of their genius, have 
 looked at it ; that Etchegaray, in Spain, looked 
 at it before he produced his troubled modern 
 Elektra which is so remote in shapen thought 
 and coloured semblance from the colour and 
 idea of its prototype; that Gabriele D'An- 
 nunzio looked at it before he became obsessed 
 with the old terrible idea of the tangled feet 
 of Destiny, so that a tuft of grass might with- 
 hold or a breath from stirred dust empoison, 
 and wrote that most perturbing of all modern 
 dramas, La Citta Morta. 
 
 That sense of the fatality which may have 
 347 
 
The become native to certain localities where 
 
 Winged Destiny has been fulfilled, which is the funda- 
 Destiny. menta i i<j ea o f a citta Morta, has been felt 
 by others also of our day. Readers of Walter 
 Pater's ' Apollo in Picardy,' for example, will 
 remember how when the Prior Saint-Jean was 
 about to be transferred to 'the wild lands' 
 where lay the ' Obedience ' of Notre-Dame- 
 de-Pratis, he was warned by the old Abbot to 
 take heed of his ways when he was come to 
 that place for ' the mere contact of one's feet 
 with its soil might change one.' Elsewhere 
 the same writer reminds us how the Greeks 
 had a special word for the Fate which accom- 
 panied one who will come to a violent end, 
 how the common Destinies of men, Molpa 
 Moerae, accompany all men indifferently; 
 but Krjp, the extraordinary Destiny, one's 
 Doom, has a scent for distant blood-shedding 
 ' and, to be in at a sanguinary death, one 
 of their number came forth to the very cradle, 
 followed persistently all the way, over the 
 waves, through powder and shot, through the 
 rose-gardens; where not? Looking back, 
 one might trace the red footsteps all along, 
 side by side.' 
 
 This sense of a doom which is not only 
 an implacable personal fatality but can be a 
 terrible and incomprehensible Fate which will 
 
 348 
 
involve innocent and guilty, a whole house, a The 
 whole clan, a race even, which will even em- Winged 
 bitter the wind, add a more cruel and relentless Destmv - 
 terror to the sea, which, most appalling of all, 
 will tangle its trailing threads in the roots of 
 grass and in the green life of flower and weed, 
 because, there, that was once accomplished 
 which was the sowing of seed or the reaping 
 of whirlwind this sense finds expression in 
 a deep and terrifying sigh throughout litera- 
 ture, from the fierce singers of Israel to the 
 last Gaelic rhapsode, from the first of the 
 dramatists of destiny even to the latest. 
 
 ii 
 
 There is no inherent reason why a poet of 
 to-day should not overtake the same themes 
 as Aischylos overtook from Phrynicus, and 
 Sophocles from Aischylos, and Euripides from 
 all three. The difficulty is not in the remote- 
 ness of the theme, still less in the essential 
 substance. It is in the mistaken idea that the 
 ancient formal method is inevitable, and in 
 the mistaken idea that a theme sustained on 
 essential and elemental things and therefore 
 independent of unique circumstance can be 
 exhausted by the flashing upon it of one great 
 light. Kassandra and Helen and Iphigeneia 
 
 349 
 
The . . . they live : they are not dead. It is not 
 
 Winged the themes that have receded but the imagin- 
 Destiny. 
 
 Merely to parody the Greek tragedians, by 
 taking a great theme and putting one's pre- 
 sumption and weakness beside it that is 
 another thing altogether. One hesitates, after 
 Shelley and Robert Browning, after Mr. Swin- 
 burne and Mr. Robert Bridges, to say that no 
 modern English poet has achieved a play with 
 a Greek heart ... no play written as a nine- 
 teenth century Sophocles or Euripides or 
 Agathon would have written it. Even on 
 Prometheus Unbound and Atalantain Calydon, 
 even on Erechtheus, the Gothic genius of the 
 North has laid a touch as delicate as frost yet 
 as durable as fire on the brows of immemorial 
 rock. Perhaps the plays of Mr. Bridges are 
 more truly classical than any modern drama 
 since Racine. But their flame is flame seen 
 in a mirror : we see the glow, we are intellec- 
 tually warmed by it, but we do not feel it ... 
 our minds only, not our hearts that should 
 burn, our nerves that should thrill, respond. 
 
 The reason, I do not doubt, is mainly a 
 psychical rather than an intellectual difficulty. 
 It is the indwelling spirit and not the mag- 
 netic mind that is wayward and eager to evade 
 the compelling wand of the imagination. For 
 
 350 
 
the spirit is not under the spell of tradition. The 
 It wishes to go its own way. Tradition Winged 
 says, if you would write of the slaying o 
 Klytaimnestra you must present a recognisable 
 Elektra and a recognisable Orestes and Dios- 
 koroi against a recognisable background : but 
 to the spirit Elektra and Orestes are simply 
 abstract terms of the theatre of the imagina- 
 tion, the Dioskoroi are august powers, win- 
 nowers of fate, and the old Greek background 
 is but a remembered semblance of a living 
 stage that is not to-day what it was yesterday 
 or shall be to-morrow, and yet is ever in 
 essentials the same. 
 
 in 
 
 We are, I believe, turning towards a new 
 theatre. The theatre of Ibsen, and all it 
 stands for, is become outworn as a compelling 
 influence. Its inherent tendency to demon- 
 strate intellectually from a series of incontro- 
 vertible material facts is not adequate for 
 those who would see in the drama the means 
 to demonstrate symbolically from a sequence 
 of intuitive perception. A subtle French 
 critic, writing of the theatre of Ibsen, appreci- 
 ates it as a theatre more negative than positive, 
 more revolutionary than foundational, more 
 
The intellectual than religious. ' A ce theatre 
 
 Winged amer et sec,' he adds, ' Fame moderne ne peut 
 Destiny. Rancher toutes ses soifs d'infini et d'absolu.' 
 
 I think that, there, the right thing is said, 
 as well as the significant indication given. 
 * More intellectual than religious ' : that is, 
 more congruous with the method of the mirror 
 that gathers and reveals certain facets of the 
 spirit, than with the spirit who as in a glass 
 darkly looks into the mirror. ' More intellec- 
 tual than religious ' : that is, more persuaded 
 by the sight that reveals the visible than by 
 the vision that perceives what materially is 
 not visible. ' At this bitter and parched theatre 
 of the intellect, the modern soul cannot quench 
 its thirst for the infinite and absolute ' : and 
 that is the reason, alone adequate, why to-day 
 the minds of men are turning to a new drama, 
 wherein thoughts and ideas and intuitions 
 shall play a more significant part than the 
 acted similitudes of the lesser emotions that 
 are not so much the incalculable life of the 
 soul as the conditioned energies of the body. 
 The Psychic drama shall not be less nervous : 
 but the emotional energy shall be along the 
 nerves of the spirit, which sees beneath and 
 above and beyond, rather than merely along 
 the nerves of the material life, which sees only 
 that which is in the line of sight. 
 
 352 
 
And as I have written elsewhere, it may The 
 well be that, in a day of outworn conventions, Winged 
 many of us are ready to turn gladly from the Destiny, 
 scenic illusions of the stage-carpenter and the 
 palpable illusions of the playwright, to the 
 ever-new illusions of the dreaming mind, 
 woven in a new intense dramatic reality 
 against imagined tapestries 
 
 . . . dream-coloured dramas of the mind 
 Best seen against imagined tapestries . . . 
 
 against revealing shadows and tragic glooms 
 and radiances as real, and as near, as the crude 
 symbols of painted boards and stereotyped 
 phrase in which we still have a receding 
 pleasure. 
 
 I think the profoundest utterance I know, 
 witnessing to the fundamentally psychical 
 nature of the drama, is a phrase of Chateau- 
 briand which I came upon recently in Book v. 
 of his Memoires . . . ' to recover the desert I 
 took refuge in the theatre.' The whole effort of 
 a civilisation become anaemic and disillusioned 
 must be to 'recover the desert.' That is a 
 central truth, perceived now of many who are 
 still the few. This great writer knew that in 
 the theatre de Vdme lay the subtlest and most 
 searching means for the imagination to compel 
 reality to dreams, to compel actuality to vision, 
 
 z 353 
 
The to compel to the symbolic congregation of 
 
 Winged words the bewildered throng of wandering and 
 
 Destiny, illusive thoughts and ideas. By ' the desert ' he 
 
 meant that wilderness, that actual or symbolic 
 
 solitude, to which the creative imagination 
 
 goes as the curlew to the wastes or as the 
 
 mew to foam and wind. 
 
 Other writers speak of ' nature ' and 'soli- 
 tude ' as though regarding them as sanctuaries 
 where the passions may, like the wild falcons, 
 cover their faces with their wings, and be still. 
 Chateaubriand was of those few who look upon 
 the solitudes of nature as enchanted lands, 
 where terror walks with beauty, and where 
 one sees on the dew the marks of invisible 
 and hurrying feet. He was of those who 
 looked upon solitude as, of old, anchorites 
 looked upon waste places where the vulture 
 had her eyrie and the hyena wailed and in 
 desolate twilights the lioness filled the dark 
 with the hunger of her young. ' Be upon 
 your guard against solitude : the great passions 
 are solitary, and to transport them to the 
 desert is to restore them to their triumph.' 
 
 IV 
 
 It is in ' the desert,' whether in the wilder- 
 ness of the unpeopled waste or in that of the 
 
 354 
 
mind where the imagination wanders like a The 
 lonely hunter on the trail of the obscure and Winged 
 the unknown, that the whisper of Destiny is Destiny, 
 supremely audible. It is on the eddying air. 
 It is in the sigh of the grass. The green 
 branch whispers it. It is in the brown leaf, 
 on the grey wind. 
 
 When we are companioned or are in crowds, 
 when we are in the fellowship of our illusions, 
 when we can banish * the desert,' shut out the 
 wilderness, we turn from this perturbing 
 thought, this Idea, so vast and menacing. 
 We talk lightly, then, of the fatality of things. 
 Our egotisms, even, feed on the ground- 
 flame : we speak of * the fatality that made 
 me do this'; ' my usual fate that has brought 
 this about'; ' there is a fatality in this date, in 
 that number, in the inevitable event, in what 
 has occurred. ' If we speak of Fate, it is as an 
 omnipresent force, indifferent at best, jealous 
 it may be, perhaps hostile, even malign. But 
 oftenest we disguise Destiny in Luck, and 
 feel as safe in the use of the subterfuge as we 
 feel uneasy in that of the sinister thing for 
 which it stands. 
 
 It is only when we turn to imaginative 
 literature, to the drama in particular, that we 
 can hear Destiny as a theme, as a present 
 reality. To many minds it is a solace, a wall, 
 
 355 
 
The rather, behind their weakness, that 'a force 
 
 Winged greater than ourselves ' is responsible for 
 Destiny, vicissitude, misfortune, miscarriage, circum- 
 stance, temperament even, even mien of mind 
 and body. It is not we, they say, but Destiny 
 who willed it so. For many others, who 
 would refuse this confusion of the invited, the 
 what but compelled fatalities, with the obscure 
 Destiny which works afar off, at long range, 
 behind many years it may be, perhaps even a 
 generation or more, many generations even, 
 and whose slow, inevitable workings are as 
 relentless as they are inscrutable, there is a 
 * fatalism ' hardly less disastrous. They will 
 not admit the feeble plea of the weak, but in 
 their hearts they say ' our best shall be set at 
 nought, our strength shall avail nothing, in 
 the end.' It is only when we turn aside from 
 the shifting images which make up the 
 phantasmagoria of life, and look, though it be 
 as in a glass darkly, into our own hearts, that 
 we may have an imagination of the Winged 
 Destiny : that spiritual force which is at once 
 as remote from us, as far above us, as the 
 dancing fires of the Pleiades, and yet in which 
 we have our being and by which we are con- 
 trolled and toward which we inevitably move, 
 even as our little world with all our universe 
 about it and beyond it moves orderly to the 
 
 356 
 
incalculable rein of one of these little dancing The 
 fires. Winged 
 
 In life, as in that pictorial show of life in es my ' 
 flashing or dimmed mirrors which we call 
 drama, or poetry, or this or that art, there is 
 no arbitrary destiny so omnipotent that the 
 soul cannot proudly meet it, none, it may be, 
 that the soul cannot overcome. But, alas, it 
 is not the soul that is called upon to meet 
 Fate, as we call the terrible logic of rhythmic 
 order, but our distempered selves, and our 
 frail wills, and our vain, impossible dreams. 
 
 It is easy, then, by the illusions of the imagi- 
 nation, to avoid the dread shadow. Man has 
 shaped and coloured many beautiful dreams, 
 as much, perhaps, to elude this shadow as to 
 create enchantment. Is it not for this, in so 
 great a part, that he has taken the sigh of the 
 sea and the cadence of the wind and the 
 murmur of the leaf, and lamentations and 
 delight and whispers, and made Music ; that 
 he has taken from the silent flower and wave- 
 haunted shell, and wrought so the colour and 
 sound of verse; that he has surprised the 
 secret of light and shade, and the secret of the 
 columnar suspense of the cypress in moonlight 
 
 357 
 
The or the single image of life silhouetted against 
 
 Winged dawn or sunglow, and the secret of the sombre 
 es my. avenues of pine-forest at sunset or moonrise, 
 and the secret of the swaying branch and the 
 blue smoke of woods and the wave of the sea, 
 and created painting and sculpture and archi- 
 tecture and the dance ? 
 
 But below all art there is an austere whisper : 
 How would it be with you, O Soul, in the 
 wilderness ; how would it be with you alone 
 there, naked amid the great silence and before 
 the eternal shadow, and with no least of your 
 illusions to hide the one or inhabit the other ? 
 It is here, in this spiritual wilderness, whether 
 of an actual or symbolical desert, that the 
 soul may know the mystery of the Winged 
 Destiny. No poor fatalities wander here : 
 here Fate herself does not reach, but leans 
 brooding on the silent horizon. 
 
 Long ago, to Delphi, where that recovered 
 memory sleeps beneath the ' Shining Rocks ' 
 and dreams from the slopes of Parnassos to 
 the meeting of the seas, a sculptor came who 
 had fashioned a beautiful image which troubled 
 all who looked upon it. His master, Agathon, 
 had made a statue, and some called it Eros 
 and some Destiny. But now the younger 
 man's work was held to be more beautiful, to 
 be strange and beautiful to disquietude, to 
 
 358 
 
trouble the soul. Some thought it to be The 
 Anteros. In that day, in sculpture, only the Winged 
 Son of Ouranos and Aphrodite knew the sym- Destin y 
 bolic beauty of wings. This winged one, was 
 he that most ancient and dread god, imaged 
 in changeless youth, Eros ? Or was he that 
 mysterious otherself, or a sombre brother, son 
 of one older than Ouranos, Anteros ? 
 
 Men wondered, for no one could say. The 
 sculptor had suddenly laid aside life when he 
 laid aside the chisel. He was a man of deep 
 meanings, they knew. When, a year before, 
 in the city of Athena, Agathon had made for 
 a Thracian prince his statue of Destiny, that 
 image had been a woman, but with the brows 
 and mien of Athena herself. Only, the down- 
 looking eyes were all but closed. This other 
 Destiny was a youth, they saw, but with up- 
 lifted face, and eyes looking out through time 
 and change and circumstance: young, yet 
 with weight of deep thought on the brows : 
 serene, yet somehow appalling, as though a 
 most ancient presence out of eternity looked 
 from the newly carven marble. He was 
 winged too, with great wings, as though he 
 had come from afar, and was but a moment 
 earth-lit. They would have acclaimed An- 
 teros, but that the sculptor's handman said 
 the statue was of The Winged Destiny. 
 
 359 
 
The Long afterward, the wandering priest of an 
 
 Winged obscure faith, preaching before what had been 
 Destiny, ^he great Pythian fane, told his hearers that 
 Agathon had meant Nemesis, the Following 
 Fate : but that this other pagan dreamer, 
 whose glory was now safe at Delphi, meant a 
 deeper mystery, the Following Love. The 
 stern Mistress of the veiled eyes was Retribu- 
 tion : the Divine Youth was Redemption. 
 The one was born of Man and the Spirit of 
 Time : the other was born of God and the 
 Spirit of Eternity. 
 
 VI 
 
 I, too, in common doubtless with many of my 
 readers, have thus pondered often, and per- 
 plexedly, this problem of destiny in the uses 
 of the imagination, above all in tragic drama, 
 and the deeper and more complicated problem 
 of destiny in life. The more I have thought, 
 the more it is borne in upon me that, in its 
 final expression, the secret of Destiny must be 
 sought within, in the interior life : in a word, 
 that Destiny, as we commonly understand it, 
 is but the vague term of a quality of spiritual 
 energy, and not the designation of an immut- 
 able and inevitable force. I turned with 
 eagerness, as doubtless many another turned, 
 
 360 
 
to M. Maeterlinck's La Sagesse et la Destinee, The 
 when that remarkable book was published ; to Winged 
 find there a solution of, or at least a signal es m ^' 
 clue to the heart of the mystery. But, amid 
 much that is beautiful and no little that is 
 significant in interpretation and direction, I 
 found nothing uttered with the authenticity of 
 one who has put away visions because he has 
 attained the source of visions, nothing revealed 
 in the signature of the absolute. That fine 
 book, indeed, in itself knows a continual hesi- 
 tancy in nomenclature even, for the author 
 speaks now of ' le Destin ' and now of * la 
 Destinee,' apparently by the one meaning that 
 immaterial and secret and divine manifestation 
 which we call Fate, the incommensurable 
 vision and irresistible will of the Unknown ; 
 and, by the other, that material and obvious 
 and mortal sequence of circumstance which 
 we indicate in Fatality. 
 
 It is clear that he found ; it is clear, I think, 
 that each of us, pondering individually this 
 problem, must find ; it is possible that of old 
 the Greek tragedians, those masters of illusion 
 in the eternal drama of our mortal ( yea ' and 
 the immortal 'nay,' found, and more inti- 
 mately than we have found . . . the same 
 distinction which, soon or late, confronts 
 every thinker : the distinction between the 
 
 361 
 
The Destiny, or the Fate, which compels through 
 
 Winged the invisible and the untraceable, and the 
 Destiny. j esser destiny or fatality, which from without 
 allures, or from within impels the overmaster- 
 ing throng of recognised or recognisable forces 
 and influences, the things of our inheritance, 
 of our creation, the things of our passions, the 
 things of our desire. 
 
 But, surely, there is a further reach than 
 this for the questing mind. In Destiny it- 
 self in that great, abstract, overwhelming 
 mystery of Fate, sitting as one enthroned 
 above the turmoil of the lesser destinies of 
 time and circumstance and the unceasing 
 maelstrom of the myriad inextricable fatali- 
 ties are there not two mighty forces at 
 work ? Is there not the sombre and inscrut- 
 able Genius of this world, which weaves with 
 time and races and empires, with life and 
 death and change, and in the weft of whose 
 web our swift - passing age, our race, our 
 history, are no more than vivid gleams for a 
 moment turned to the light ? And is there 
 not also a Winged Destiny, a Creature of the 
 Eternal, inhabiting infinitude, so vast and 
 incommensurable that no eye can perceive, no 
 imagination limn, no thought overtake, and 
 yet that can descend upon your soul or mine 
 as dew upon blades of grass, as wind among 
 
 362 
 
the multitudinous leaves, as the voice of sea The 
 and forest that can rise to the silence 
 mountain-brows or sink in whispers through estm y- 
 the silence of a child's sleep? a Destiny 
 that has no concern with crowns and empires 
 and the proud dreams of men, but only with 
 the soul, that flitting shadow, more intangible 
 than dew, yet whose breath shall see the 
 wasting of hills and the drought of oceans. 
 
 It is because I believe there is, in Fate, first 
 the destiny which we make and invite, and 
 name fatality : and above it the Destiny which 
 calls to us as a tide calling in the night, and 
 to which we respond from within, as creatures 
 that must inevitably go with that tide, whether 
 we know it or believe in it or ignore it, but 
 yet who on that tide may compel our own 
 way, and avoid the whirlpool, and attain the 
 fortunate shores : and, beyond this, the 
 Winged Destiny, which leans from Eternity 
 into Time, and whispers to the soul through 
 symbol and intuition the inconceivable mystery 
 of the divine silence it is because of this 
 belief that I have placed these few words at 
 the end of this book. 
 
 For, throughout, there breathes in it, I 
 hope, not only the faith in the things which 
 the spirit may compel and dreams achieve ; 
 not only the belief that the secret of redemp- 
 
 363 
 
The tion, alike for the individual, the generation, 
 
 Winged anc i the race, lies in the well in each heart and 
 Destiny. not in the clouds that fl oat on tne aim 
 
 horizons of the mind of man ; but also the 
 belief, the faith, that for each of us, for all, 
 there is the Winged Destiny, the Shepherd 
 with whom, in the dark hour, we must go at 
 last, to whose call we must answer when the 
 familiar passions and desires and longings are 
 as dust on the wind, and only that remains 
 which so little we consider, only that little 
 shaken flame of the spirit, which is yet of the 
 things that do not pass, which is of the things 
 immortal. 
 
 CU'NIVE" 
 
 V, 
 
 364 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 
 
 As explained in the text, the short paper called ' Celtic' 
 has already appeared in book-form (The Divine Adventure : 
 lona, etc.), and is now, with the courteous consent of 
 Messrs. Chapman and Hall, reprinted in its completed 
 state, as the second of the three papers collectively 
 entitled ' For the Beauty of an Idea/ The present first 
 part of this dissertation on the Celtic destiny appeared 
 (without certain revisions and added matter) as a fore- 
 word to an American reprint of the ( Celtic ' essay (Mr. 
 Mosher, Portland, Maine). Of < The Sunset of Old Tales ' 
 series, one or two are printed for the first time ; others, 
 under the same general title, appeared in The Fortnightly 
 Review, where, also, respectively at a later and at an 
 earlier date, have appeared f The Woman at the Cross- 
 ways ' and (Section HI.) < The Four Winds of Eirinn.' ' The 
 Wayfarer ' is reprinted from Cosmopolis. Of The Children 
 of Water ' series, ' Maya ' is printed for the first time ; 
 five appeared in The Contemporary Review, and ( The Lynn 
 of Dreams ' in Mr. Mosher's reprint of By Sundown Shores 
 (from The Divine Adventure volume) ; while ' Sorrow on the 
 Wind ' (as also from Section in., ' A Triad ' and ' Aileen ') 
 first appeared in Country Life. 
 
 In the third section, ( f Anima Celtica/) ' The Shadowy 
 Waters' (under the title 'The Later Work of Mr. Yeats'), 
 and part of 'The Gaelic Heart,' have appeared in The 
 
 365 
 
North American Review. 'Seumas' is reprinted from the 
 American volume, By Sundown Shores, already alluded to. 
 ' The Gael and his Heritage ' appeared in The Nineteenth 
 Century for November 1900. ' The Ancient Beauty ' 
 formed the introduction to the American (Mr. Mosher's) 
 edition of my retold version of the old tale of Deirdre 
 and the Sons of Usna ; and a portion of the earlier part 
 of { The Winged Destiny ' (since revised and adapted) 
 appeared as an introductory note on ' Fatality in Tragic 
 Drama/ to Mr. Mosher's American edition of my drama, 
 The House of Usna. 
 
 To Sir James Knowles, Mr. W. L. Courtney, Mr. Percy 
 Bunting, and Mr. P. Anderson Graham, editors of the 
 English periodicals named; to the editor of The North 
 American Review, to Mr. Thos. B. Mosher of Portland, 
 Maine ; and to Messrs. Chapman and Hall, I wish to 
 make all acknowledgment of friendly courtesy. 
 
 Printed by T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to His Majesty 
 at the Edinburgh University Press 
 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
 1 One ends, as one began, in paying tribute to the charm and natural magic, the 
 beauty, the genius indeed, of her writings, and in trying to point to what may come 
 to be accepted as their last errand and effect.' From an article on the writings of 
 Miss Macleod, in the ' Fortnightly Review ' of June 1900. 
 
 ' Throughout her pages one is ever keenly aware of the elements. Sun, wind, and 
 flame, the dew and the flood, the dust and the mountain-top assume personality. 
 The otherlife everywhere is immanent ; and the horizons of life are continually 
 lifting that the bodily eye may catch glimpses of spiritual things. With all this 
 wonder and enchantment, however, we feel secure footing. The earth is firm ground 
 to the wandering feet : we recognise the earth-smells and the savour of the salt 
 spume : it is the palpable, familiar world that wears the unfamiliar enchantment. . . . 
 Of such substance is the texture of the fabric which Fiona Macleod weaves ; and 
 she weaves as one who has looked into the deeps of her heart and seen therein 
 patterns both of time and eternity.' Chas. G. D. Roberts' 'Critical Essays." 
 
 ' Yet it is not altogether by the tales she tells, it is by the spirit rather in which 
 she writes, that Miss Macleod represents in a native and novel manner the genius 
 of the Gael. Other writers without number have depicted the Highlander, and 
 some even of the stories told by the new author have been told in English before. 
 But here for the first time in English it is a sennachy herself that writes : and the 
 tales live, and the Gael is pictured, not as he appears to the outsider, but as he is 
 known only to himself, and to himself only perhaps at inspired times.' 'Byways of 
 Scottish Story.' By George Eyre-Todd. Pp. 104 et seq. 
 
 THE DIVINE ADVENTURE, IONA, AND OTHER 
 STUDIES IN SPIRITUAL HISTORY. 
 
 Second Edition, Svo. 6s. CHAPMAN AND HALL (1900). 
 
 THE DOMINION OF DREAMS. 
 
 Fourth Edition. 8vo. 6s. ARCHIBALD CONSTABLE AND Co. 
 
 TRAGIC ROMANCES, BARBARIC TALES, 
 SPIRITUAL TALES. 
 
 New Cheap Editions of each. Also of ' THE SIN-EA TER ' and 
 ' THE WASHER OF THE FORD: DAVID NUTT. 
 
THE DIVINE ADVENTURE, IONA, AND OTHER 
 STUDIES IN SPIRITUAL HISTORY. 
 
 Second Edition. Crown 8vo. Price 6s. 
 
 1 It is one of the books the beauty of which grows with reperusal. For here is 
 beauty of form, beauty of thought, and the deeper beauty of symbolism, and the 
 book will be re-read for each of these, but eventually the reader will come back to 
 it for its first beauty, and the beauty of expression, since this is the greatest of all." 
 Literature. 
 
 ' The writer's own very real hunger and thirst after the unknown eternal beauty 
 is made manifest.' The Athenaeum. 
 
 'This exceedingly interesting and finely written book the most personal Miss 
 Macleod has given us, and to us in many ways her best. . . . That Miss Macleod's 
 own work conforms to the ideals she has thus set forth no reader of the present book 
 can doubt.' The Academy. 
 
 ' Miss Fiona Macleod is the most authentic interpreter of the Gael. No one has 
 approached her. She stands alone. She, too, is a dreamer and a weaver of spells, 
 and few can hearken to her without falling under the influence. A subtle, inexplic- 
 able charm is in all she writes . . . true interpreter of the Gael, and the greatest 
 and most enduring force in the modern Celtic revival.' The Irish Weekly Independent. 
 
 ' Miss Macleod has it (the faculty to synthetise), and her manifestation of it in 
 this book has done more than anything else to make one feel that her work has the 
 quality of real greatness.' From an article, ' A Celtic Thinker,' in ' The Dublin Express.' 
 
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