Part 19 (1/2)
”Ay There's no call to nao over to them If she didn't, the monks would kill her, they said The est here, they told her, or sheUp between Sgeur Iolaire and Cnoc Druidean there's a path that no o There, in the old days, they burned a woht she was She was one o' the Sorrows of the Sheen, that they put out to suffer for theue to _thes har over by Staonaig way But I told irl not to mind She was safe wi' me, I said She said that was true For weeks I heard noan' pluckin' wild roses
'_Breisleach_!' I cried, 'what's the hted, 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 ood man
_Whist_, now! Rob, do you see who's here?”
Nothing is an faiths and early Christian beliefs, such as may be found still in soo on the boat that was taking us both to the west, told dalene 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 cadalene's first husband had tracked her there, and she knew that he would kill the blindsome swine, and she herself herded thehed at her ”That is a fine boar you have there,” he said Then he put a spear through the blind man ”Noill 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 kneho she was Colu and lareat wonderful beauty to her
It is characteristic enough, even to the quaint confusion that could dalene and St Columba contemporary But as for the story, what is it but the universal Gaelic legend of Diarer 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 theal and Clare; nor that the death-place has yll and Connemara In Gaelic Scotland every one knows that Diarround 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 Antri to the isles, it lost so both of Eire and Alba The Campbells, too, claiet him So, there, by one byplay of theraiend about Mary Magdalene, and so named Grania anew Perhaps a story-teller consciously wove it the neay
Perhaps an Ionathe tale in distant Barra or Uist, in Coll or Tiree, ”buried” Mary in a cave of Icolend 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 ulay, 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 eadh a chlarsach dut,” ”Pity on hiulay, the ”harper” who broke his ”harp” for a wo man, a fiddler For three years he wandered out of the west into the east, and when he had -boat, or even a boat itself, he cae, at dusk, he played her favourite air, an ”oran leannanachd,” but when she ca on her left hand and a baby in her ar Macneill knew Mary had broken her troth and married another man, and so he went down to the shore and played a ”marbh-rann,” and then broke his fiddle on the rocks; and when they cas of it round his neck In Uist, the instruuely called a ”tioht in a famine time, the musician breaks it so as to feed the fire to warm his wife--a sacrifice ill repaid by the elopeht In Iona, the tale is of an Irish piper who cae, and to lay his ”peeb-h'yanna”[5] on ”the holy stones”; but, when there, he got word that his young as ill, so he ”made a loan of his clar,” and with the one aith a soldier for the Aendary history of Iona would be as an 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 naed the west, from the Lews to the town of the Hurdle-ford
In poetic narration ”the men of Lochlin” occurs oftener: sos called thes have left nueneral term ”summer-sailors,” _somerledi_, which survives as Somerled Many Macleods and Macdonalds are called Sonus), and in the Hebrides surnaood ely 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 soure of the Washer of the Ford, or spiritual destiny in that of the Woman with the Net, was natural: as to believe that the saentle as St Francis, and yet could thrust the living Oran back into his grave, or prophesy, as though hi 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 soes as representative of three phases--namely, of the barbaric history of Iona, of the primitive spiritual history which is so childlike in its siht and iery which at one tienerations (for it still survives), was a noro 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, so into it part of another Colu of the hundredth Sabbath after Colulory to God 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 reen initials and earth-brown branching letters, had made Colum weary He had broodedworld 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 co of the northern Picts, had sent hiht out of Eire: and for hie was upon him, to see what manner of man this Colum ho had made Ioua, that was ”Innis-nan-Dhruidhnean”--the Isle of the Druids--into a place of neorshi+p
For three hours Ardan and Colum had walked by the sea-shore 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 God
”Ay, sure: and now,” said the saint, ”O Ardan the wise, is my God thy God?”
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 God and my God” Colum was silent Then he said: ”Thee and thine, O Ardan, fro to the least of his slaves, shall have a long weariness in hell 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, Coluhter that,” he said, when Ardan ceased
”And ill that be, O Colurey eyes, and he turned and looked about him