The Works of Fiona Macleod Part 19

"Ay. There's no call to name names. One day she told me that she had been bidden to go over to them. If she didn't, the monks would kill her, they said. The monks are still the strongest here, they told her, or she me, I forget which. That is, except over by Staonaig. Up between Sgeur Iolaire and Cnoc Druidean there's a path that no monk can go. There, in the old days, they burned a woman. She was not a woman, but they thought she was. She was one o' the Sorrows of the Sheen, that they put out to suffer for them, an' get the mortal ill. That's the plague to _them_.

It's ill to any that brings harm on _them_. That's why the monks arena strong over by Staonaig way. But I told my girl not to mind. She was safe wi' me, I said. She said that was true. For weeks I heard no more o' that monk. One night Elsie came in smiling an' pluckin' wild roses.

'_Breisleach_!' I cried, 'what's the meanin' o' roses in January?' She looked at me, frighted, an' said nothin', but threw the things on the fire. It was next day she went away."

"And----"

"An' that's all. Here's the tea. Ay, an' for sure here's my good man.

_Whist_, now! Rob, do you see who's here?"

Nothing is more strange than the confused survival of legends and pagan faiths and early Christian beliefs, such as may be found still in some of the isles. A Tiree man, whom I met some time ago on the boat that was taking us both to the west, told me there's a story that Mary Magdalene lies in a cave in Iona. She roamed the world with a blind man who loved her, but they had no sin. One day they came to Knoidart in Argyll. Mary Magdalene's first husband had tracked her there, and she knew that he would kill the blind man. So she bade him lie down among some swine, and she herself herded them. But her husband came and laughed at her. "That is a fine boar you have there," he said. Then he put a spear through the blind man. "Now I will take your beautiful hair," he said. He did this and went away. She wept till she died. One of Colum's monks found her, and took her to Iona, and she was buried in a cave. No one but Colum knew who she was. Colum sent away the man, because he was always mooning and lamenting. She had a great wonderful beauty to her.

It is characteristic enough, even to the quaint confusion that could make Mary Magdalene and St. Columba contemporary. But as for the story, what is it but the universal Gaelic legend of Diarmid and Grania? They too wandered far to escape the avenger. It does not matter that their "beds" are shown in rock and moor, from Glenmoriston to Loch Awe, from Lora Water to West Loch Tarbert, with an authenticity as absolute as that which discovers them almost anywhere between Donegal and Clare; nor that the death-place has many sites betwixt Argyll and Connemara. In Gaelic Scotland every one knows that Diarmid was wounded to the death on the rocky ground between Tarbert of Loch Fyne and the West Loch. Every one knows the part the boar played, and the part Finn played.

Doubtless the story came by way of the Shannon to the Loch of Shadows, or from Cuchullin's land to Dun Sobhairce on the Antrim coast, and thence to the Scottish mainland. In wandering to the isles, it lost something both of Eire and Alba. The Campbells, too, claimed Diarmid; and so the Hebrideans would as soon forget him. So, there, by one byplay of the mind or another, it survived in changing raiment. Perhaps an islesman had heard a strange legend about Mary Magdalene, and so named Grania anew. Perhaps a story-teller consciously wove it the new way.

Perhaps an Iona man, hearing the tale in distant Barra or Uist, in Coll or Tiree, "buried" Mary in a cave of Icolmkill.

The notable thing is, not that a primitive legend should love fantastic raiment, but that it should be so much alike, where the Syrian wanders from waste to waste, by the camp-fires of the Basque muleteers, and in the rainy lands of the Gael.

In Mingulay, one of the south isles of the Hebrides, in South Uist, and in Iona, I have heard a practically identical tale told with striking variations. It is a tale so wide-spread that it has given rise to a pathetic proverb, "Is mairg a loisgeadh a chlarsach dut," "Pity on him who would burn the harp for you."

In Mingulay, the "harper" who broke his "harp" for a woman's love was a young man, a fiddler. For three years he wandered out of the west into the east, and when he had made enough money to buy a good share in a fishing-boat, or even a boat itself, he came back to Mingulay. When he reached his Mary's cottage, at dusk, he played her favourite air, an "oran leannanachd," but when she came out it was with a silver ring on her left hand and a baby in her arms. Thus poor Padruig Macneill knew Mary had broken her troth and married another man, and so he went down to the sh.o.r.e and played a "marbh-rann," and then broke his fiddle on the rocks; and when they came upon them in the morning he had the strings of it round his neck. In Uist, the instrument is more vaguely called a "tiompan," and here, on a bitter cold night in a famine time, the musician breaks it so as to feed the fire to warm his wife--a sacrifice ill repaid by the elopement of the hard woman that night. In Iona, the tale is of an Irish piper who came over to Icolmkill on a pilgrimage, and to lay his "peeb-h'yanna"[5] on "the holy stones"; but, when there, he got word that his young wife was ill, so he "made a loan of his clar," and with the money returned to Derry, only to find that his dear had gone away with a soldier for the Americas.

The legendary history of Iona would be as much Pagan as Christian.

To-day, at many a _ceilidh_ by the warm hearths in winter, one may hear allusions to the Scandinavian pirates, or to their more ancient and obscure kin, the Fomor.... The Fomor or Fomorians were a people that lived before the Gael, and had their habitations on the isles: fierce prowlers of the sea, who loved darkness and cold and storm, and drove herds of wolves across the deeps. In other words, they were elemental forces. But the name is sometimes used for the Norse pirates who ravaged the west, from the Lews to the town of the Hurdle-ford.

In poetic narration "the men of Lochlin" occurs oftener: sometimes the Summer-sailors, as the Vikings called themselves; sometimes, perhaps oftenest, the Danes. The Vikings have left numerous personal names among the islanders, notably the general term "summer-sailors," _somerledi_, which survives as Somerled. Many Macleods and Macdonalds are called Somerled, Torquil (also Torcall, Thorkill), and Ma.n.u.s (Magnus), and in the Hebrides surnames such as Odrum betray a Norse origin. A glance at any good map will reveal how largely the capes and promontories and headlands, and small bays and havens of the west, remember the lords of the Suderoer.

The fascination of this legendary history is in its contrast of the barbaric and the spiritual. Since I was a child I have been held spellbound by this singular union. To see the Virgin Mary in the sombre and terrible figure of the Washer of the Ford, or spiritual destiny in that of the Woman with the Net, was natural: as to believe that the same Columba could be as tender as St. Bride or gentle as St. Francis, and yet could thrust the living Oran back into his grave, or prophesy, as though himself a believer in the druidic wisdom, by the barking of a favourite hound that had a white spot on his forehead--_Donnalaich chon chinain_.

Of this characteristic blending of pagan and Christian thought and legend I have tried elsewhere to convey some sense--oftener, perhaps, have instinctively expressed: and here, as they are apposite to Iona, I would like to select some pages as representative of three phases--namely, of the barbaric history of Iona, of the primitive spiritual history which is so childlike in its simplicity, and of that direct grafting of Christian thought and imagery upon pagan thought and imagery which at one time, and doubtless for many generations (for it still survives), was a normal unconscious method. Some five years ago I wrote three short Columban stories, collectively called _The Three Marvels of Iona_, one named "The Festival of the Birds," another "The Sabbath of the Fishes and the Flies," and the third "The Moon-Child." It is the second of these that, somewhat altered to its present use by running into it part of another Columban tale, I add now.

Before dawn, on the morning of the hundredth Sabbath after Colum the White had made glory to G.o.d in Hy, that was theretofore called Ioua, or the Druid Isle, and is now Iona, the saint beheld his own sleep in a vision.

Much fasting and long pondering over the missals, with their golden and azure and sea-green initials and earth-brown branching letters, had made Colum weary. He had brooded much of late upon the mystery of the living world that was not man's world.

On the eve of that hundredth Sabbath, which was to be a holy festival in Iona, he had talked long with an ancient greybeard out of a remote isle in the north, the wild Isle of the Mountains, where Scathach the queen hanged the men of Lochlin by their yellow hair.

This man's name was Ardan, and he was of the ancient people. He had come to Iona because of two things. Maolmr, the king of the northern Picts, had sent him to learn of Colum what was this G.o.d-teaching he had brought out of Eire: and for himself he had come when old age was upon him, to see what manner of man this Colum was, who had made Ioua, that was "Innis-nan-Dhruidhnean"--the Isle of the Druids--into a place of new worship.

For three hours Ardan and Colum had walked by the sea-sh.o.r.e. Each learned of the other. Ardan bowed his head before the wisdom. Colum knew in his heart that the Druid saw mysteries.

In the first hour they talked of G.o.d.

"Ay, sure: and now," said the saint, "O Ardan the wise, is my G.o.d thy G.o.d?"

At that Ardan turned his eyes to the west. With his right hand he pointed to the sun that was like a great golden flower. "Truly, He is thy G.o.d and my G.o.d." Colum was silent. Then he said: "Thee and thine, O Ardan, from Maolmr the Pictish king to the least of his slaves, shall have a long weariness in h.e.l.l. That fiery globe yonder is but the Lamp of the World: and sad is the case of the man who knows not the torch from the torch-bearer."

In the second hour they talked of Man. While Ardan spoke, Colum smiled in his deep, grey eyes.

"It is for laughter that," he said, when Ardan ceased.

"And why will that be, O Colum Cille?" Ardan asked. Then the smile went out of Colum's grey eyes, and he turned and looked about him.

He saw near, a crow, a horse, and a hound.

"These are thy brethren," he said scornfully.

But Ardan answered quietly, "Even so."

The third hour they talked about the beasts of the earth and the fowls of the air.

At the last Ardan said: "The ancient wisdom hath it that these are the souls of men and women that have been, or are to be." Whereat Colum answered: "The new wisdom, that is old as eternity, declareth that G.o.d created all things in love. Therefore are we at one, O Ardan, though we sail to the Isle of Truth from the west and the east. Let there be peace between us." "Peace," said Ardan.

That eve, Ardan of the Picts sat with the monks of Iona.

Colum blessed him and said a saying. Cathal of the Songs sang a hymn of beauty. Ardan rose, and put the wine of guests to his lips, and chanted this rann:

O Colum and monks of Christ, It is peace we are having this night: Sure, peace is a good thing, And I am glad with the gladness.

We worship one G.o.d, Though ye call him Dia-- And I say not, O De!

But cry _Bea'uil Bel_!

For it is one faith for man, And one for the living world, And no man is wiser than another-- And none knoweth much.

None knoweth a better thing than this: The Sword, Love, Song, Honour, Sleep.

None knoweth a surer thing than this: Birth, Sorrow, Pain, Weariness, Death.

Sure, peace is a good thing; Let us be glad of peace: We are not men of the Sword, But of the Rune and the Wisdom.

I have learned a truth of Colum, And he hath learned of me: All ye on the morrow shall see A wonder of the wonders.

Ardan would say no more after that, though all besought him. Many pondered long that night. Cathal made a song of mystery. Colum brooded through the dark; but before dawn he fell asleep upon the fern that strewed his cell. At dawn, with waking eyes, and weary, he saw his Sleep in a vision.

It stood grey and wan beside him.

"What art thou, O Spirit?" he said.

"I am thy Sleep, Colum."

"And is it peace?"

"It is peace."

"What wouldst thou?"

"I have wisdom. Thy mind and thy soul were closed. I could not give what I brought. I brought wisdom."

"Give it."