William Sharp

“ But the sun spell is even more fugitive upon the face of this wild land than the spell of beauty upon a woman. So runs one of our proverbs: as the falling of the wave, as the fading of the leaf, so is the beauty of a woman, unless—ah, that unless, and the indiscoverable fount of joy that can only be come upon by hazard once in life, and thereafter only in dreams, and the Land of the Rainbow that is never reached, and the green sea-doors of Tir-na-thonn, that open now no more to any wandering wave! ”

“ It is more than a reed, it is more than a wild doe on the hills, it is more than a swallow lifting her wing against the coming of the shadow, it is more than a swan drunken with the savour of the blue wine of the waves when the green Arctic lawns are white and still. It is more than these, which has the Son of God for brother, and is clothed with light. God doth not extinguish at the dark tomb what he hath litten in the dark womb.
Who shall say that the soul knows not when the bird is aweary of the nest, and the nest is aweary of the wind? ”

“ And that is why, when Orchil weaves dumbly in the dark: and Keithoir is blind, and dreams among remote hills and by unfrequented shores: and Manannan lies heavy with deep sleep, with the oceans of the world like moving shadows above him: and Hesus is grown white and hoar with the frost of waning stars and weary with the burden of new worlds: that is why Angus Ogue, the youthful god, is more ancient than they, and is for ever young. Their period is set. Oblivion is upon the march against their immemorial time. But in the heart of Angus Ogue blooms the Rose of Youth, whose beauty is everlasting. ”

“ I will not be forgetting that gloaming.
Bitter tears are those that children have. All that we say with vain words is said by them in this welling spray of pain. I had the sorrow that day. Strange hostilities lurked in the familiar bracken. The soughing of the wind among the trees, the wash of the brown water by my side, that had been companionable, were voices of awe. The quiet light upon the grass flamed.
The fierce people that lurked in shadow had 184 eyes for my helplessness. When the dark came I thought I should be dead, devoured of I knew not what wild creature. ”

“ The sacrifice of God was made. Out of the immeasurable heaven He had come, in His golden chariot. Now, in the wonder and mystery of His love, He was re-born upon the world, re-born a little fugitive flame upon a low hill in a remote isle. Great must be His love that He could die thus daily in a thousand places: so great His love that He could give up His own body to daily death, and suffer the holy flame that was in the embers He illumined to be lighted and revered and then scattered to the four quarters of the world.
Bride could bear no longer the mystery of this great love. ”

“ The whole coast of the Ross is indescribably wild and desolate. From Feenafort (Fhionnphort) , opposite Balliemore of Icolmkill, to the hamlet of Earraid Lighthouse, it were hardly exaggeration to say that the whole tract is uninhabited by man and unenlivened by any green thing. It is the haunt of the cormorant and the seal.
No one who has not visited this region can realise its barrenness. Its one beauty is the faint bloom which lies upon it in the sunlight—a bloom which becomes as the glow of an inner flame when the sun westers without cloud or mist. ”

“ And yet another day the woman said to her that it would be well to bear the child and let it die: for beauty was like sunlight on a day of clouds, and if she were to go forth young and alone and so wondrous fair, she would have love, and love is best.
“Truly, love is best,” Eilidh answered. “And because Isla loved me, I would that another Isla came into the world and sang his songs—the songs that were so sweet, and the songs that he never sang, because I gave him death when I gave him life. ”

“ But Angus Ogue stirred not, and dreamed only that a mighty eagle soared out of the infinite, and scattered planets and stars as the dust of its pinions: and that as these planets fell they expanded into vast oceans whereon a myriad million waves leaped and danced in the sunlight, singing a laughing song: and that as the stars descended in a silver rain they spread into innumerable forests, wherein went harping the four winds of the world, and amidst which the white doves that were his kisses flitted through the gold and shadow. ”

“ When he answered not, one of the Twelve leaned forward and looked at him. It was the Weaver of Death who did this thing.
“The three shuttles of Judas the Fear-Weaver, O little Art,” said the Weaver of Death, “are called Mystery, and Despair, and the Grave.”
And with that Judas rose and left the room. But the shape that he had woven went forth with him as his shadow: and each fared out into the dim world, and the Shadow entered into the minds and into the hearts of men, and betrayed Iosa that was the Prince of Peace. ”

“ The slow hot drone filled the cell.
“Master,” said Oran, “it is the will of the brethren that you break your fast. You are old, and God has your glory. Give us peace.”
“Father,” urged Keir, seeing that Colum kneeled unnoticingly, his lips still moving above his black beard, with the white hair of him falling about his head like a snowdrift slipping from a boulder. “Father, be pitiful! We hunger and thirst for your presence. We can fast no longer, yet have we no heart to break our fast if you are not with us. ”

“ But it 136 seemed to me that a dream rose to the face of Sheumas, like one of those submarine flowers that are said to rise at times and be visible for a moment in the hollow of a wave. The dream, the light, waned; and there was a great stillness and white peace where the trouble had been. “It is the Smoothing of the Hand,” said Alasdair McIan, in a hushed voice.
Often I had heard this lovely phrase in the Western Isles, but always as applied to sleep. When a fretful child suddenly falls into quietude and deep slumber, an isles-woman will say that it is because of the Smoothing of the Hand. ”

“ But Angus Ogue had the deep immemorial age of the granite upon him, and he slept as the dead sleep.
Orchil smiled. “They are old, old, the ancient gods,” she whispered: “they are so old, they cannot see eternity at rest. For Angus Ogue is the god of Youth, and he only is eternal and unchanging.”
Then, before she turned once more to her looms of life and death, she lifted her eyes till her gaze pierced the brown earth and rose above the green world and was a trouble amid the quietudes of the sky. ”

“ The last time that the Fisher of Men was seen in Strath-Nair was not of Alasdair Macleod but of the little child, Art Macarthur, him that was born of the woman Mary Gilchrist, that had known the sorrow of women.
He was a little child, indeed, when, because of his loneliness and having lost his way, he lay sobbing among the bracken by the stream-side in the Shadowy Glen.
When he was a man, and had reached the gloaming of his years, he was loved of men and women, for his songs are many and sweet, and his heart was true, and he was a good man and had no evil against any one. ”

“ God wash the sin of pride out of my life!”
At that a soft white shining, as of one winged and beautiful, stood beside the dead.
“Art thou Murtagh?” whispered Colum, in deep awe.
“No, I am not Murtagh,” came as the breath of vanishing song.
“What art thou?”
“I am Peace,” said the glory.
Thereupon Colum sank to his knees, sobbing with joy, for the sorrow that had been and was no more.
“Tell me, O White Peace,” he murmured, “can Murtagh hearken, there under the apples where God is?”
78
“God’s love is a wind that blows hitherward and hence. Speak, and thou shalt hear.” ”

“ It was while the dew was yet wet on the grass that Bride came out of her father’s house, and went up the steep slope of Dun-I. The crying of the ewes and lambs at the pastures came plaintively against the dawn. The lowing of the kye arose from the sandy hollows by the shore, or from the meadows on the lower slopes. Through the whole island went a rapid trickling sound, most sweet to hear: the myriad voices of twittering birds, from the dotterel in the sea-weed to the larks climbing the blue spirals of heaven. ”

“ Only Oran and Keir cursed the fishes in the deeps of the sea and the flies in the deeps of the air.
71
On the morrow, when the sun was yellow on the brown sea-weed, and there was peace on the isle and upon the waters, Colum and the brotherhood went slowly towards the sea.
At the meadows that are close to the sea, the Saint stood still. All bowed their heads.
“O winged things of the air,” cried Colum, “draw near!”
With that the air was full of the hum of innumerous flies, midges, bees, wasps, moths, and all winged insects. These settled upon the monks, who moved not, but praised God in silence. ”

“ Is it a less thing than a reed, which sees the yellow birch-gold adrift on the lake, and the gown of the heather grow russet when the purple has passed into the sky, and the white bog-down wave grey and tattered where the loneroid grows dark and pungent—which sees, and knows that the breath of the Death-Weaver at the Pole is fast faring along the frozen norland peaks. ”

“ Before dawn, on the morning of the hundredth Sabbath after Colum the White had made glory to God in Hy, that was theretofore called Ioua and thereafter I-shona 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. ”

“ But when the screaming of the gulls came over the loch, and the plaintive crying of the lapwings was upon the moorland, and the smell of loneroid and bracken was heavy in the wind-fallen stillness, Ulad turned, for he felt a touch upon his shoulder.
It was Connla who touched him, and he knew the man. He had the old wisdom of knowing all that is in the mind by looking into the eyes, and he knew how the man had come there.
“Let the men who are your men, O Connla, move away from here in their birlinn, and go farther up into the haven.” ”

“ Then Orchil laughed.
“And yet,” she said, “when Angus Ogue had the snow-sleep of a thousand years, none knew it! For a thousand years the pulse of his heart of love has been the rhythmic beat of the world. For a thousand years the breath of his nostrils has been as the coming of Spring in the human heart. For a thousand years the breath of his life has been warm against the lips of lovers. For a thousand years the memory of these has been sweet against oblivion. Nay, not one 207 hath dreamed of the deep sleep of Angus Ogue.”
“Who is he?” cried Keithoir. ”

“ That Fisher still haunts the invisible shadowy stream of human tears; those mystic Spinners still ply their triple shuttles, and the fair Weaver of Hope now as of yore and for ever sends his rainbows adrift across the hearts and through the minds of men.... These tales, let me add, are not legendary mysteries but legendary moralities. They are reflections from the mirror that is often obscured but is never dimmed. ”

“ She could see the black print of feet in the silver sheen on the wet grass, for it was on a grassy hill that she now walked, though a day ago every leaf and sheath there had lain brown and withered. The footprints she followed were those of a woman and of a child.
All night through she tracked those wandering feet in the dew. They were always fresh before her, and led her away from the villages, and also where no wild beasts prowled through the gloom. There was no weariness upon her, though often she wondered when she should see the fair wondrous face she sought. ”

“ I know now that when I turned my child’s-eyes upon these shuttles I saw that they were alive and wonderful, and never the same to the seeing.
“They are called Beauty and Wonder and Mystery.”
And with that Iosa mac Dhe sat down and talked with the Twelve. All were passing fair, save him who looked sidelong out of dark eyes. I thought each, as I looked at him, more beautiful than any of his fellows; but most I loved to look at the twain who sat on either side of Iosa.
“He will be a Dreamer among men,” said the prince; “so tell him who ye are.” ”

“ And who is for knowing that Bethlehem is not the place, and that this is not the night of the day of the days? Brighid, Brighid, the woman Mary must be the mother of the Prince, who is to save all mankind out of evil and pain and death! ”

“ I asked him once why he heard what so few heard, but he smiled and said only: “When the heart is full of love, cool dews of peace rise from it and fall upon the mind: and that is when the song of Joy is heard.” ”

“ One noon, among the hills, Angus Ogue lay in sleep. It was a fair place where he lay, with the heather about him and the bracken with its September gold in it. On the mountain-slope there was not a juniper tall enough, not a rock big enough, to give poise to a raven: all of gold bracken and purple heather it was, with swards of the paler ling. ”

“ But while Dùghall Donn went away rejoicing, and found that which Bride had foretold, she passed out into the street. None saw her in the gloaming, or as she went towards the Gate of the East. When she passed by the Lazar-house she took her mantle off her back and laid it in the place of offerings. All the jewels and fine gold passed into invisible birds with healing wings: and these birds flew about the heads of the sick all night, so that at dawn every one arose, with no ill upon him, and went on his way rejoicing. ”