The Works of Fiona Macleod Part 18

In a dream I dream frequently, that of being the wind, and drifting over fragrant hedgerows and pastures, I have often, through unconscious remembrance of that image of St. Bride sitting the seat of a bird on the edge of the cliff that is this world, felt myself, when not lifted on sudden warm fans of dusk, propelled as on a swift wing from the edge of a precipice.

I would that we had these winds of dream to command. I would, now that I am far from it, that this night at least I might pa.s.s over Iona, and hear the sea-doves by the ruins making their sweet mournful croon of peace, and lift, as a shadow gathering phantom flowers, the pale orchis by the lapwing's nest.

One day, walking by a reedy lochan on the Ross of Mull, not far inland from Fionnaphort, where is the ferry for Baile-Mr of Iona, I met an old man who seemed in sorrow. When he spoke I was puzzled by some words which were not native there, and then I learned that he had long lived in Edinburgh and later in Dunfermline, and in his work had a.s.sociated with Hollanders and others of the east seas.

He had come back, in his old age, to "see the place of his two loves"--the hamlet in Earraid, where his old mother had blessed him "forty year back," and the little farm where Jean Cameron had kissed him and promised to be true. He had gone away as a soldier, and news reached them of his death; and when he came out of the Indies, and went up Leith Walk to the great post-house in Edinburgh, it was to learn that the Earraid cottage was empty, and that Jean was no longer Jean Cameron.

There was not a touch of bitterness in the old man's words. "It was my name, for one thing," he said simply: "you see, there's many a 'J.

Macdonald' in the Highland regiments; and the mistake got about that way. No, no--the dear la.s.s wasna to blame. And I never lost her love.

When I found out where she was I went to see her once more, an' to tell her I understood, an' loved her all the same. It was hard, in a way, when I found she had made a loveless marriage, but human nature's human nature, an' I could not but be proud and glad that she had nane but puir Jamie Macdonald in her heart. I told her I would be true to her, and since she was poor, would help her, an' wi' G.o.d's kindness true I was, an' helped her too. For her man did an awfu' business one day, and was sentenced for life. She had three bairns. Well, I keepit her an'

them--though I ne'er saw them but once in the year, for she had come back to the west, her heart brast with the towns. First one bairn died, then another. Then Jean died."

The old man resumed suddenly: "I had put all my savings into the Grand North Bank. When that failed I had nothing, for with the little that was got back I bought a good 'prenticeship for Jean's eldest. Since then I've lived by odd jobs. But I'm old now, an' broke. Every day an' every night I think o' them two, my mother an' Jean."

"She must have been a leal fine woman," I said, but in Gaelic. With a flash he looked at me, and then said slowly, as if remembering, "_Eudail de mhnathan an domhain_," "Treasure of all the women in the world."

I have often thought of old "Jamie Macdonald" since. How wonderful his deep love! This man was loyal to his love in long absence, and was not less loyal when he found that she was the wife of another; and gave up thought of home and comfort and companionship, so that he might make life more easy for her and the children that were not his. He had no outer reward for this, nor looked for any.

We crossed to Baile-Mr together, and when I came upon him next day by the Reilig Odhrain, I asked him what he thought of Iona.

He looked at the grey worn stones, "the stairway of the kings," the tombs, the carved crosses, the grey ruins of the wind-harried cathedral, and with a wave of his hand, said simply, "_Comunn mo ghaoil_," "'Tis a companionship after my heart."

I do not doubt that the old man went on his way comforted by the grey silence and grey beauty of this ancient place, and that he found in Iona what would be near him for the rest of his days.

As a child I had some wise as well as foolish instruction concerning the nations of Faerie. If, in common with nearly all happy children, I was brought up in intimate, even in circ.u.mstantial, knowledge of "the fairies"--being charitably taught, for one thing, so that I have often left a little bowl of milk, a saucerful of oatcake and honey, and the like, under a wooden seat, where they would be sure to see it--I was told also of the Sdhe, often so rashly and ignorantly alluded to as the fairies in the sense of a pretty, diminutive, harmless, natural folk; and by my nurse Barabal instructed in some of the ways, spells, influences, and even appearances of these powerful and mysterious clans.

I do not think, unless as a very young child, I ever confused them. I recollect well my pleasure at a sign of grat.i.tude. I was fond of making little reed or bulrush or ash flutes, but once I was in a place where these were difficult to get, and I lost the only one I had. That night I put aside a small portion of my supper of bread and milk and honey, and remember also the sacrifice of a gooseberry of n.o.ble proportions, relinquished, not without a sigh, in favour of any wandering fairy lad.

Next morning when I ran out--three of us then had a wild morning performance we called some fantastic, forgotten name, and ourselves the Sun-dancers--I saw by the emptied saucer my little reed-flute! Here was proof positive! I was so grateful for that fairy's grat.i.tude, that when dusk came again I not only left a larger supper-dole than usual, but, decked with white fox-glove bells (in which I had unbounded faith), sat drenched in the dew and played my little reed. Any moment (I was sure) a small green fellow would appear, and with wild indignation I found myself s.n.a.t.c.hed from the gra.s.s, and my ears dinned now with reproaches about the dew, now with remonstrances against "that frightfu'

reed-screeching that scared awa' the varry hens."

Ah, there are souls that know nothing of fairies, or music!

But the Sdhe are a very different people from the small clans of the earth's delight.

However (though I could write of both a great volume), I have little to say of either just now, except in one connection.

It is commonly said that the People of the Sdhe dwell within the hills, or in the underworld. In some of the isles their home, now, is spoken of as Tir-na-thonn, the Land of the Wave, or Tir-fo-Tuinn, the Land under the Sea.

But from a friend, an Islander of Iona, I have learned many things, and among them, that the Shee no longer dwell within the inland hills, and that though many of them inhabit the lonelier isles of the west, and in particular The Seven Hunters, their Kingdom is in the North.

Some say it is among the pathless mountains of Iceland. But my friend spoke to an Iceland man, and he said he had never seen them. There were Secret People there, but not the Gaelic Sdhe.

Their Kingdom is in the North, under the _Fir-Chlisneach_, the Dancing Men, as the Hebrideans call the polar aurora. They are always young there. Their bodies are white as the wild swan, their hair yellow as honey, their eyes blue as ice. Their feet leave no mark on the snow. The women are white as milk, with eyes like sloes, and lips like red rowans.

They fight with shadows, and are glad; but the shadows are not shadows to them. The Shee slay great numbers at the full moon, but never hunt on moonless nights, or at the rising of the moon, or when the dew is falling. Their lances are made of reeds that glitter like shafts of ice, and it is ill for a mortal to find one of these lances, for it is tipped with the salt of a wave that no living thing has touched, neither the wailing mew nor the finned sgadan nor his tribe, nor the narwhal. There are no men of the human clans there, and no sh.o.r.es, and the tides are forbidden.

Long ago one of the monks of Columba sailed there. He sailed for thrice seven days till he lost the rocks of the north; and for thrice thirty days, till Iceland in the south was like a small bluebell in a great grey plain; and for thrice three years among bergs. For the first three years the finned things of the sea brought him food; for the second three years he knew the kindness of the creatures of the air; in the last three years angels fed him. He lived among the Sdhe for three hundred years. When he came back to Iona, he was asked where he had been all that long night since evensong to matins. The monks had sought him everywhere, and at dawn had found him lying in the hollow of the long wave that washes Iona on the north. He laughed at that, and said he had been on the tops of the billows for nine years and three months and twenty-one days, and for three hundred years had lived among a deathless people. He had drunk sweet ale every day, and every day had known love among flowers and green bushes, and at dusk had sung old beautiful forgotten songs, and with star-flame had lit strange fires, and at the full of the moon had gone forth laughing to slay. It was heaven, there, under the Lights of the North. When he was asked how that people might be known, he said that away from there they had a cold, cold hand, a cold, still voice, and cold ice-blue eyes. They had four cities at the four ends of the green diamond that is the world. That in the north was made of earth; that in the east, of air; that in the south, of fire; that in the west, of water. In the middle of the green diamond that is the world is the Glen of Precious Stones. It is in the shape of a heart, and glows like a ruby, though all stones and gems are there. It is there the Sdhe go to refresh their deathless life.

The holy monks said that this kingdom was certainly Ifurin, the Gaelic h.e.l.l. So they put their comrade alive in a grave in the sand, and stamped the sand down upon his head, and sang hymns so that mayhap even yet his soul might be saved, or, at least, that when he went back to that place he might remember other songs than those sung by the milk-white women with eyes like sloes and lips red as rowans. "Tell that honey-mouthed cruel people they are in h.e.l.l," said the abbot, "and give them my ban and my curse unless they will cease laughing and loving sinfully and slaying with bright lances, and will come out of their secret places and be baptized."

They have not yet come.

This adventurer of the dreaming mind is another Oran, that fabulous Oran of whom the later Columban legends tell. I think that other Orans go out, even yet, to the Country of the Sdhe. But few come again. It must be hard to find that glen at the heart of the green diamond that is the world; but, when found, harder to return by the way one came.

Once when I was sailing to Tiree, I stopped at Iona, and went to see an old woman named Giorsal. She was of my own people, and, not being Iona-born, the islanders called her the foreigner. She had a daughter named Ealasaidh, or Elsie as it is generally given in English, and I wanted to see her even more than the old woman.

"Where is Elsie?" I asked, after our greetings were done.

Giorsal looked at me sidelong, and then shifted the kettle, and busied herself with the teapot.

I repeated the question.

"She is gone," the old woman said, without looking at me.

"Gone? Where has she gone to?"

"I might as well ask you to tell me that."

"Is she married ... had she a lover ... or ... or ... do you mean that she ... that you ... have lost her?"

"She's gone. That's all I know. But she isn't married, so far as I know: an' I never knew any man she fancied: an' neither I nor any other on Iona has seen her dead body; an' by St. Martin's Cross, neither I nor any other saw her leave the island. And that was more than a year ago."

"But, Giorsal, she must have left Iona and gone to Mull, or maybe gone away in a steamer, or----"

"It was in midwinter, an' when a heavy gale was tearing through the Sound. There was no steamer an' no boat that day. There isn't a boat of Iona that could have taken the sea that day. And no--Elsie wasna drowned. I see that's what's in your mind. She just went out o' the house again cryin'. I asked her what was wrong wi' her. She turned an'

smiled, an' because o' that terrifying smile I couldna say a word. She went up behind the Ruins, an' no one saw her after that but Ian Donn. He saw her among the bulrushes in the swamp over by Staonaig. She was laughing an' talking to the reeds, or to the wind in the reeds. So Ian Donn says."

"And what do _you_ say, Giorsal?"

The old woman went to the door, looked out, and closed it. When she returned, she put another bit on the fire, and kept her gaze on the red glow.

"Do you know much about them old Iona monks?" she asked abruptly.

"What old monks?"

"Them as they call the Culdees. You used to be askin' lots o' questions about them. Ay? well ... they aye hated folk from the North, an'

women-folk above all."

I waited, silent.

"And Elsie, poor la.s.s, she hated them in turn. She was all for the wild clansmen out o' Skye and the Long Island. She said she wished the Siol Leoid had come to Iona before Colum built the big church. And for why?

Well, there's this, for one thing: For months a monk had come to her o'

nights in her sleep, an' said he would kill her, because she was a heathen. She went to the minister at last, an' said her say. He told her she was a foolish wench, an' was sore angry with her. So then she went to old Mary Gillespie, out by the lochan beyond Fionnaphort on the Ross yonder--her that has the sight an' a power o' the old wisdom. After that she took to meeting friends in the moonshine."

"Friends?"