Part 13 (1/2)

I tell this story of Coll here, for, as I have said, it is toislander He stands for the soul of a race

It is because, to enius of our race, that I have spoken of him here Below all the strife of lesser desires, below all that he has in co unquenchable thirst for the things of the spirit This is the thirst that makes him turn so often from the near securities and prosperities, and indeed all beside, setting his heart aflame with vain, because illie is a frosty breath: the beauty that is beyond what is beautiful For, like Coll, the world itself has not enough to give him And at the last, and above all, he is like Coll in this, that the sun and moon and stars themselves may become as trampled dust, for only a breast-feather of that Dove of the Eternal, whichhome where are the dews of immortality

”The Dove of the Eternal” It was from the lips of an old priest of the Hebrides that I first heard these words I was a child, and asked hilow in Icolmkill

”Yes,” he told me, ”the Dove is white, and it was beloved of Colum, and is of you, little one, and of me”

”Then it is not dead?”

”It is not dead”

I was in a more wild and rocky isle than Iona then, and when I went into a solitary place close by my home it was to a stony wilderness so desolate that in h there were no sheep lying beside boulders as grey and still, nor whinnying goats (creatures that have always seeely homeless, so that, as a child, it was often my noon-fancy on hot days to play to the the hill-wind at the s of a rude furtive h why I did not know, and probably did not try to know): and though I could hear nothing but the soft, swift, slipping feet of the wind a up fros (beloved of ss for the small honey-flies which fed upon the thyme): still, on that day, I was not ill at ease, nor in any way disquieted But before ladly It flew circling aht it had passed seaward; but it caain, and alit on a boulder

I went upon my knees, and prayed to it, and, as nearly as I can remember, in these words:--

”O Dove of the Eternal, I want to love you, and you to love o there again, the place where Colu as you, Dove” (I reht seeetically), ”Dove of the Eternal”

That evening I told Father Ivor what I had done He did not laugh at me

He tooktiently from him, and kneeled at the chair, and otten: ”O Dove of the Eternal, grant the little one's prayer”

That is a long while ago now, and I have sojourned since in Iona, and there and elsewhere known the wild doves of thought and dreaain the White Dove that Coluht it must have left Iona and Barra too, when Father Ivor died

Yet I have not forgotten that it is not dead ”I want to live as long as you,” wasand believing were, ”O Dove of the Eternal, grant the little one's prayer”

It was not in Barra, but in Iona, that, while yet a child, I set out one evening to find the Divine Forges A Gaelic seroing poor and ho roads of Mull over against us, and there fed to fla fire, had been my ministrant in these words The ”revivalist” had spoken of God as one ould haood, as a blacksesture, he cried: ”This little island of Iona is this anvil; God is your blacks you knows the narroay to the Divine Forges?”

There is a spot on Iona that has always had a strange enchantment for me Behind the ruined walls of the Columban church, the slopes rise, and the one isolated hill of Iona is, there, a steep and sudden wilderness

It is commonly called Dun-I (_Doon-ee_), for at the summit in old days was an island fortress; but the Gaelic name of the whole of this uplifted shoulder of the isle is Slibh Meanach Hidden under a wave of heath and boulder, near the broken rocks, is a little pool Froeneration this has been known, and frequented, as the Fountain of Youth

There, through boggy pastures, where the huge-horned shaggy cattle stared atand roitch, I cliht see the Divine Forges, or at least ht discover a hidden way, because of the power of that water, touched on the eyelids at sunlift, at sunset, or at the rising of the athered upon the dunes by the shore, and the tall, ungainly figure of the preacher In the narrow strait were two boats, one being rowed across to Fionnaphort, and the other, with a dun sail burning flaainst Glas Eilean, on the tideway to the pro of the Divine Forges? I wondered; or were theacross to the Ross of Mull to look for the the inland hills? And the Earraidto see if they lay hidden in the wilderness of rocks, where theof the seals made the loneliness more wild and remote?

I wetted my eyelids, as I had so often done before (and not always vainly, though whether vision ca within, I know not), and looked into the little pool

Alas! I could see nothing but the reflection of a star, too obscured by light as yet for ull's wing as the bird flew by far overhead I was too young then to be content with the syht that the shadow of a wing froh indication But, as it was, I turned, and walked idly northward, down the rough side of Dun Bhuirg (at Cul Bhuirg, a furlong ard, I had once seen a phantom, which I believed to be that of the Culdee, Oran, and so never went that way again after sundown) to a thyular fascination

It is a place to this day called Dun Mananain Here, a friend who told s, a Gaelic farend about a God of the sea Manaun was his nadom of the Suderoer